Hula Hooping: Perfect Body Fat Redistribution Workout? Study Shows 3.4 cm Reduction in Waist Circumference & Redistribution of Body Fat Away From the Midsection
You don't even need that many hoops. |
I mean, who of you would have thought that weighted "hula hooping" can reduce your waist and hip girth significantly and even trigger a redistribution of body mass within only 6 weeks of training? No one?
The best way to shape your body? Build muscle, Ladies & Gents!
What, I guess most of you would rather have expected, that Stuart McGill and his colleagues would have observed improvements in torso muscular endurance as measured by isometric testing - an effect of which Figure 1 tells you that it did not occur in the study at hand.Figure 1: The scientists did not observes significant performance increases (McGill. 2014) |
Figure 2: Progressive "overload", the duration of the hooping sessions increased progressively (McGill. 2014) |
The hoop used was a weighted hoop measuring 1.02m in diameter with a mass of 1.7kg. The hoop was comprised of eight segments (approximately 0.4m in length) with a "knobby" inner ring thought of having the possibility of stimulating torso muscle activity (Figure 3).
Figure 3: In-gym intra-workout photo from the original publication (McGill. 2014) - I assume the guy on the right hand side of the photo is the trainer. |
During the trial participants attended a formalized group class once each week and used the hoop on their own, four additional times per week. Participants maintained participation log-books. One of the four participants who did not complete the trial was unable to comply with the “at home” exercise requirements.
Basically, you already know what happened, but in view of what you've just learned about the body size of the women, the absolute loss of 3.4cm from the waist and 1.4 cm from the hips probably sound even more impressive, right?
Figure 4: We are not dealing with an overall, but a spot reduction in body fat (McGill. 2014) |
Figure 4: Olson and Edelstein observed spot reduction in the trained arm in a 6-week study in response to single-arm 7-RM curls in thirty-two subjects (Olson. 1968) |
Overall, the "repositioning" or "redistribution" effect wouldn't count as "spot reduction" in the strict sense, anyway, and could eventually be a logical consequence of what previous studies in obese individuals have already shown: The unhealthy intra-abdominal fat (the one that is not covering your abs) is always the first to go | Comment on Facebook!
- Gwinup et al. "Thickness of subcutaneous fat and activity of underlying muscles." Annals of internal medicine 74.3 (1971): 408-411.
- McGill et al. "A 6 week trial of hula hooping using a weighted hoop: Effects on skinfold, girths, weight and torso muscle endurance." Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (2014). Publish Ahead of Print
- Olson, Arne L., and Elliott Edelstein. "Spot reduction of subcutaneous adipose tissue." Research Quarterly. American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation 39.3 (1968): 647-652.
- Schade, Maja, et al. "Spot reducing in overweight college women: its influence on fat distribution as determined by photography." Research Quarterly. American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation 33.3 (1962): 461-471.