Some people drink booze or pop anti-depressants in order to stave off the blues, but East Dallas resident Jessica Bullock deals in another way. “I could never be in a bad mood while I’m hula hooping,” she says. Bullock is a fan of String Cheese Incident, a jam band widely credited with spawning a modern day hooping craze among its followers. “My husband and I used to go to their shows 10 years ago, and I loved to watch the people in the hula hoop pits, but I never took part myself back then,” she says. Eventually she came around, though. At one of the shows, her hubby bought her a brightly colored hoop, and she immediately craved more. She even learned to make them herself — sort of. “I was first taught using small connectors and pipe glue. I was told to let the hoop cure for 24 hours. I wasn’t real good at waiting, and used my hoops too soon. I ended up making teardrops instead of hoops.” A few years ago, Bullock located some hula-hooping soul mates, and the group began holding weekly hoop sessions at White Rock Lake. Today she is training to become a certified hula-hoop instructor through hoopnotica.com. Instantaneous good moods are nice, but the groovy exercise has had unexpected perks. Bullock, a self-proclaimed “big girl”, has toned up significantly by way of the core-strengthening hula movements. “I call it the accidental workout,” she says. “I’ve lost about 30 or so pounds without even paying attention.”
