The Club — SweatShop Health Club

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Sweatshop Health Club

Searching for a workout experience that fits you and your needs? No need to look any further. Here at the SweatShop we intend to create a personal, personalized fitness adventure that helps you work hard in an environment that suits you! Don't get lost in the airplane hangars of big-box workout centers, we are your neighborhood shop, and we intend to stay that way!

Walk into the SweatShop Health Clubs in Saint Paul, Minnesota and you immediately know this is no ordinary athletic club. Gone is the florescent-lit acreage of "cardio machines," absent are the lycra-clad muscle-men and aerobic queens, missing is a one-size-fits-all fitness prescription. It is readily apparent that this community based, locally owned, equal parts of brain and brawn, is not your average health club.

Opened in 1982, the SweatShop is Minnesota’s original refuge from the warehouse-style health club. Inspired by her own desire to "find daily exercise that made me want to get up and shout for joy," founder and president, Gayle Winegar, poured her energy into creating a fitness facility that fulfills the need real people have to incorporate exercise into their crowded lives.

"For almost three decades, our mission hasn’t changed a bit," says Gayle. "The SweatShop has always been about getting our arms around people and lifting them up to their highest fitness and health potential."

Custom-Tailored Fitness

The SweatShop welcomes nearly 2,000 members and non-member clients every year as well as a community of fitness and Pilates professionals. Two out of three of the club’s clients are women, who come to the SweatShop because of its unique focus on women’s health and wellbeing. The SweatShop has a friendly, intimate atmosphere, experienced and knowledgeable staff, longevity, and credibility.

The SweatShop is known for helping clients achieve their fitness goals with a custom-built plan, whether they sign on as members or choose their fitness activities from our extensive non-member menu. More than 60% of the fitness consulting the SweatShop provides is either personal training or Pilates instruction (one-on-one reformer sessions and Pilates mat classes). Zumba, Yoga, Drums Alive, Spinning, Aerobics and Power Weights classes, as well as a complete line of free weights, resistance and cardio machines.

The SweatShop is also the largest and oldest training facility for fitness professionals in the Midwest. It’s been training and interning fitness instructors for ACE (American Council on Exercise) certification for 28 years. The SweatShop is the only licensed STOTT PILATES® Licensed Training Center facility in the Upper Midwest.

Innovative Wellness Programming

The SweatShop understands that wellness is about more than regular exercise. In addition to the SweatShop’s customized fitness programming, the club will develop innovative whole-person programs that enhance its clients overall quality of life. Women and men join the SweatShop because its staff expertly coach them to better fitness – with real results. But even more importantly, the SweatShop is a community where its clients find friends. Perhaps that’s why the SweatShop was named one of only a handful of "body (and brain) friendly gyms" by Mode magazine.