Unique fitness available in Belleville

By Rebecca Bartlett

BELLEVILLE – It was while watching an episode of Ellen that a local woman got the idea of bringing hula hoop fitness to Belleville.

Andrea Brennan-Doucette says she was going through a tough time in her life when she saw an episode with a guest who used a hula hoop for exercise.

“There’s just something about watching someone hula hoop that makes you smile and makes you feel joyful. I thought, ‘Oh my god, if just watching two people hula hoop makes me smile and feel joyful I think it’s something I need to try and do’.”

That led to Brennan-Doucette starting her own business called hOOpjOy. It’s a fitness program that uses weighted hula hoops to work on core muscles and cardio. And Brennan-Doucette makes her own hula hoops.

She tried finding a hoop in a store, but was out of luck. She looked online and to order the kind she was looking for would have cost more than tubing to make her own, she says.

Once she made her first hoop, she says she loved it and had success with hula hooping.

“I took a little video clip of it, I put it on Facebook and just said to my friends, ‘I have a whole bunch of tubing left over I made myself a hula hoop, does anyone else want a hula hoop?’ To my surprise, my inbox exploded with people asking for a hula hoop.”

It’s been a few years now since Brennan-Doucette first discovered hula hooping as way to get exercise. She says that once she started selling hoops, people would ask her to teach them how to properly use a hoop and learn new things. At first she would bring them to her house, or to a park to work on hooping, but she says people’s interest just kept growing. She decided it would be easier to set aside a time and have classes.

A few months ago she started holding a hula hooping class every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Living Energy studio, and she says that since interest is so high people have to sign up in advance.