SweatShop Health Club

Gayle Winegar :: Founder and President ::

Gayle Winegar is a fitness revolutionary. As founder and president of the SweatShop Health Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota and along with long time staff member Jill Winegar ( and even longer sister) founded the first STOTT PILATES® Licensed training center in the Midwest, Winegar’s mission is to change people’s lives for the better through a unique approach to physical, mental, spiritual, and social health.

Winegar’s vision is rooted in her empathy with her clients’ struggles to "find time for exercise." Her turning point came 30 years ago when she found herself in a "hotel room in Rome at midnight eating steak tartare from room service and calculating how much longer I could live that way before I became Miss Piggy." Since 1982, she’s applied her "humor, endless energy and creativity" to helping women and men discover the joy of fitness, overcome insecurities about their appearance, and create a new way of living that means more fun and less stress.

Winegar first gained international attention in 1998 when she launched Take Back the Beach, a crusade for more realistic expectations of body image. The heart of Take Back the Beach was the 1999 REAL Swimsuit Calendar, a spoof of the infamous Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue that featured photos of "role models" - real women and men having fun.

Winegar’s bold views, intelligence, and bravada were an instant hit with the media. Interviews with the Chicago Tribune, Forbes magazine, Club Business International, America’s Health Network TV and England’s Health and Fitness magazine brought her distinctive voice to a global audience hungry for her vision of health and fitness.
Winegar’s message: Women’s bodies are not accessories to how they look.

Sharing Her Vision with the Health & Fitness Industry
Today, Winegar is a sought-after consultant to the fitness industry. Her energy and humor help create excitement in an environment that’s continuously challenged to come up with "the next big thing." Her fresh ideas for women’s programming offer other fitness owners a new vantage point from which to approach the design of their business. Her creativity can form the foundation for attention-getting public relations and marketing campaigns that lead new clients to the door and brand fitness businesses as leading-edge.

For nearly 30 years, Winegar has been an industry pioneer, educating clients and fitness professionals alike . Above all, Gayle Winegar sees herself as representative of women across the United States - she is a single mother and entrepreneur, striving to balance fitness with family, friends, work and life.