'It's the hoop. It's just that fun'

OKALOOSA ISLAND — Kayla Joseph is used to the odd looks she gets as she hula hoops down the beach. But she says most skeptics quickly become believers and end up hula hooping right beside her.

“I’ve had people laugh at me or just stare at me,” Joseph said as she worked the hoop recently. “I’ve even heard people ask, ‘What is she doing?’ But there’s never a time I’ve come that someone hasn’t joined me.”

Joseph said she has been hooping for two years and has been making her own hoops for about a year that she sells at local festivals. She also is getting ready to begin teaching “hoopnastics” in June.

The Fort Walton Beach resident said hooping has become a favorite pastime.

“I love it. I really, really do,” Joseph said. “It’s a good way to meet people. I’m hula hooping every day somewhere. I go all over the place. I’ll even watch a movie and hoop through the whole thing.”

She said hula hooping works several parts of the body, from the abdomen to the thighs and from the buttocks to the lower back. Plus, it’s fun, she added.

As for her hoop, Joseph said the best part is that it’s versatile and can travel with her anywhere. At the beach one day last week Joseph took a homemade hoop and showed how she made it collapsible so she can take it wherever she goes.

“It’s amazing what you can do with a hoop,” Joseph said as she spun it from her hands to her stomach and then legs. “You can work it all and do all sorts of things with it.

“I hate going to the gym but I need to exercise, so this is perfect and I always have fun,” she added.

Hoopnastics classes will be at 6 p.m. Thursdays beginning June 1 at Emerald City Gymnastics on Eglin Parkway. Joseph said the class basically will be what she does every time she steps out of her house.

“I like getting people to hula hoop with me,” she said as she picked up a brightly colored green and purple hoop. “I’ll bring four hoops and end up having people hula hooping with me. It’s the hoop. It’s just that fun.”