PILLOW TALK

The Berkeley is going through hoops offering the chance to twirl your way to fitness, says Jade Conroy

‘The bigger the hoop, the better.” This is the first piece of advice any beginner hulahooper should consider. Another tip: place your dominant foot forward, keeping the knee bent, and just go for it.

I am atop The Berkeley hotel in west London about to embark on an hour-long lesson of HulaFit, a combination of hulahooping, cardio and core training, which is popular among the A-list. Liv Tyler and Michelle Obama are said to be hoop aficionados.

The class is led by founder Anna Byrne on the pool deck of the hotel’s glorious rooftop spa. The idea came to her while at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada Desert.

“I was really bad to begin with,” Anna tells me. “I just couldn’t keep the hoop up.” When the class begins, though, it’s difficult to imagine her struggles. She elegantly twists and twirls, all the while keeping the hoop rhythmically dancing around her waist, before giving us a quick brief in the history of hooping. It was in fact invented a long time before Fifties hoop mania, and can be traced back as far as the American Indians in the 1400s.

Anna teaches us how to spin the rings up and down our bodies, how to turn in the opposite direction to the moving hoop (harder than it sounds) and pirouette (near impossible). Muscle memory from childhood means I can, at least, keep the hoop up. We all manage to spin the hoop around our arms, but by this point, one class member has sat down, one is bent over double laughing, and at least two hoops have ended up in the pool.

After an interval of core training – squats, push-ups, jumping – we move on to tricks. This is clearly Anna’s bread and butter. She performs with fire rings at festivals and is the resident “hooper” at London’s Café de Paris. She shows us the Limbo, effectively doing the limbo through the moving hoop, and the Vortex, a move that requires the hoop to travel up, down and around your spinning body while your hands make flamenco movements. I look like a maniacal robot in comparison to Anna’s effortlessly fluid limbs.

Hula-hooping is estimated to burn 600 calories an hour, so you do get the workout you’re promised, and in a lovely setting. The package also includes a post-hooping Mediterranean-style lunch – crab, king prawns, salads and burrata – and use of the inviting pool. So you’ll soon forget if you failed to master the Vortex.

The Berkeley offers weekly HulaFit classes on Wednesdays (noon-1pm) for up to six people until October 28. £65 per person, including poolside lunch and use of the pool. Doubles from £450.

The HulaFit team at The Berkeley hotel