Sasha hopes to get the nation in a spin

Dec 17 2009 by Gil Lightfoot, Flintshire Chronicle

The first time Sasha Kenney tried hoola hooping it led to a real ‘light bulb’ moment which changed her life completely. Now she is hoping to get the whole nation in a spin.

As she spends her days teaching people of all ages the art of hoola hooping, Sasha’s life as a consultant for a European grant-funded project working for a Slovenian company seems very far behind her.

It was shortly after the birth of her second daughter that Sasha, who originally hails from Slovenia but now lives in Wrexham, decided she needed to get back in shape. She braved an exercise class but as the session came to an end the teacher announced that that would be the last class. “I was very disappointed,” she says. “I had only just got back into fitness and the classes were being cancelled. Then we were told that the following week an American teacher would be teaching hoola hoop.

“It was like a light going on. I decided there and then that that was what I really wanted to do with my life. I even left the car at the centre so that I could walk home and take the time to think everything through. It was an incredible feeling.

“I have always been a fitness-minded person and my job at the time no longer held any challenges for me.”

Sasha, who originally came to this country to study English and German, set about researching hoola hooping as an aid to fitness. She ordered her first hoola hoop online, bought a DVD and began teaching herself the basics.

“It’s an amazing feeling when you get going,” she says. “It takes you back to your childhood. But it is also very different because this is so much more challenging.”

In the past two years she has qualified as an exercise to music instructor and undertaken a hoola hoop instructor’s course.

It’s all a long way from her first class when she roped in 15 friends to take part. She was overwhelmed when her next class in Gresford was packed out.

She devised a six-week course for beginners, followed by hoop and tone classes using heavier hoops for people with more experience.

Far from the small lightweight hoops used by children, the adult hoops are larger and weighted.

Sasha now teaches 15 sessions a week – with her pupils ranging from children in primary schools to adult classes where her oldest student is 74.

“In the 18 months I have been doing this, I haven’t come across anyone I couldn’t teach to do it,” she says.

“It involves a lot more than spinning the hoop around your waist. You use a lot of different muscle groups meaning you get a full body work-out. It’s low impact and lots of fun. It’s effective but not damaging to the body in the way that some exercise regimes are. I enjoy seeing the real buzz that people get out of it.”

Now Sasha, who also runs hooping parties, is hoping that she can convert the nation to hoola hooping and make it a mainstream fitness activity, as it is in the US.

She now makes and decorates her own hoops, is about to start classes in Chester and is hoping to franchise her company HoolaNation.

She is already training other instructors and says it is her dream to hold hoop-making workshops.

Sasha’s Chester classes start at the Northgate Arena on January 7. For further information visit her website: www.hoolanation.co.uk