Background

Millions of people around the world have joined online fitness classes during the pandemic, improvising whenever needed (did anyone else use wine bottles as hand weights?) and pushing aside sofas to create a mini yoga, aerobics or HIIT studio. But the appetite for hula-hooping at home wasn’t something Amazi had anticipated.

As Head of Performance for Marawa’s Majorette, she’d been hooping for a while, teaching classes with Playtone – a self-described ‘playground for alternative fitness and fun’ – and enjoying being part of a sociable hula-hooping community.

“Then lockdown hit and it was terrifying,” says Amazi. “For the first two months my work was reduced to 10% of what I’d been doing. So we decided to host a few online classes, despite having no idea what the response would be – were people going to want to hula-hoop in their living room? Would they be hitting their cats and their plants and their lamps?!”

They needn’t have worried, people signed up and started spinning. Amazi remembers suddenly having a structure to her day and a reason to get up each morning, and the success of those initial classes inspired her to create Hoop Blast – a hula-hoop-based fitness class that’s packed with dynamic exercises aimed at raising the heart rate and working up a sweat.

Among the attendees of those early classes was Kandy Diamond, a part-time lecturer and part-time designer, who lives in Sheffield. “I’d bought a hoop in early March 2020 as I was hoping to attend an in-person event in London. But then, well, you know what happened!”

Thankfully, Kandy didn’t have to put her dreams of learning to hoop on hold and, since those early days of the pandemic, she’s gone from beginner to accomplished hula-hooper, learning on-body and off-body circus-style tricks and increasingly acrobatic moves. 

“There were multiple classes each week,” Kandy remembers, “with a hula-hoop dance class on Saturdays. And when I couldn’t make classes because of work, they were always recorded so I could do them in my own time.”

Word spread organically via social media, and as the popularity of Hoop Blast grew, Amazi started posting Zoom screenshots of students with their hoops on her Eventbrite page. 

“I wanted every class to be fun and active. I picked high-energy music themed around Pride in June, or disco or hip-hop – whatever we were feeling.”

The Meet

High-energy might just be the perfect term for Amazi and Kandy’s long-awaited meet-up in London’s King’s Cross this summer. 

Despite the late afternoon sun drawing plenty of people to the canalside hotspot of Coal Drops Yard, it’s impossible to miss Amazi as she strides towards us, tens of colourful hoops slung over her shoulder, which she says represent just a small selection of her 300-plus collection.

Excitement is high after months of sharing screens and conversation between the pair is instant and abundant – in fact – it’s hard to believe this is the first time they’ve met in real life. “I knew I’d meet Kandy eventually,” says Amazi, “we chat all the time on social media, but it was hard to imagine sitting down together like we are today when the country was in the height of lockdown.”

But here they are, face-to-face, with the chance to talk about their experiences over the past 18 months. “The classes meant so much to me,” says Kandy. “They gave me structure and something to look forward to. And they gave me an opportunity to move.” 

Before lockdown, Kandy played roller derby, and so her weeks were spent training, preparing for tournaments and competing. “When things shut down, I knew I needed to keep active and hula-hooping turned out to be so rewarding. I’d been skating for a long time and didn’t feel like I was improving, I’d got to a plateau stage with it, so it was nice to feel like I was getting better. I mean, I was a complete beginner when I started hula-hooping.”

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