Among adults, Valerie Sereno’s hula hooping motivation may seem quaint.

“It’s going to make you feel good,” said Sereno, of Kenosha, who likes to hoop through jam band concerts (like The Dead, formerly The Grateful Dead). “You go somewhere else. It frees your mind.”

Her students — the 26-year-old teaches mini-courses at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and elsewhere — are drawn with other plans, though reaching back to childhood is not far behind.

“Out of all the exercise classes you could take, this one sounded like the most fun,” said Sally Binder, of Racine, who agreed to take the hooping course with her friend and co-worker, Mary Fornal. “Like it wasn’t going out and really exercising.”

But it is exercising. Sereno says hooping for 10 minutes is equivalent to running an 8-minute mile.

“It slims the mid-section and definitely builds strength in your arms,” Sereno said. “You’re using a lot of muscles that you don’t even know about, or wouldn’t imagine you would use when hula hooping. We say, ‘Ten minutes a day takes inches away.”’

Hooping is not a mainstream exercise activity, but Katie Debrabander, heath and wellness coordinator for the YMCA’s Callahan Family branch, said interest is growing. She’s thinking about adding classes to the YMCA’s summer schedule.

“You can definitely get aerobic benefit from it,” Debrabender said. “It’s not as hardcore as a boot camp class, obviously. It’s just more of a fun way to get some cardio in.”

Binder and Fornal found out the fun factor can be contagious. Their co-workers at Goodland Elementary School in Racine had all kinds of questions about Sereno’s hooping course.

“They wanted to know what she was teaching us,” Fornal said. “That was a little different than what we could actually do, though.”

The pair still managed to start a group, which occasionally draws 20 hoopers, to gyrate away some stress after school.

The group thing is typical.

“I think people feel better hooping with friends around,” Sereno said. “They loosen up.”

Fornal added: “We look like idiots together.”

Sereno said it’s not as hard to learn as some people think.

“Once people actually get inside the hoop, they usually say ‘This is so easy,’” she said.

Like many students, Mary James of Kenosha (who was joined by her friend Lynn Slivon, of Somers) came to the class hoopless.

“She (Sereno) brought a bunch the first night — different sizes — and we tried them out to see what was comfortable,” James said. “That helped. I don’t know if I would have known how to pick one.”

Eventually most bought one of the models Sereno makes.

“They’re not the hoops you used as kids,” Sereno said. “Those are too flimsy.”

Sereno’s hoops are made from high-test irrigation tubing, and available from 39 inches to 44 inches in diameter. In what may be a counter-intuitive twist, larger hoops are actually easier to use. Sereno’s hoop is tiny, but appears to orbit her waist with little or no effort — and just as easily rises over her head, spins on an arm, rolls across her shoulders and returns to her waist.

That’s not to say it never falls. Sereno drops a hoop now and then, just not quite as often as her students. James drew applause in class for reaching her goal of 85 revolutions. Sereno looks like she could go on for 85 minutes.

“I brought my 14-year-old daughter to class once, and told her she couldn’t come back,” Binder said. “She was too good.”

There is safety in the class, even surrounded by the mirrored walls of Parkside’s dance studio.

“In a beginner class, nobody can do it right,” Binder said.

Sereno encourages outdoor hooping, and hopes the activity will become popular enough that groups of people can get together in parks to hoop away summer afternoons, maybe with the help of Sereno’s plans to hoop and sell hoops at Kenosha events like Bloomin’ Days and through Peace Tree, 4721 Seventh Ave.

Even after nailing her goal, James may not feel ready to harness some childhood abandon and step into a hoop in public.

“I found a place — one place — in my house where I can hoop and I won’t break anything,” she said.

Outdoors will have to wait.

“Not yet,” James said. “I live on a corner.”