If you feel like shit go to the gym.
If you feel tired go to the gym.
If you feel depressed go to the gym.
If you’re bald go to the gym.
If you feel sorry for yourself go to the gym.
You’ll start feeling better. I promise.
In her mid-40s, Winifred “Heavy Metal” Pristell was a 5’5” retired barber in Seattle who weighed 235 pounds. She smoked, drank, ate poorly, and worked long hours. One day in the bathtub she felt like she was dying. She asked her daughter to walk with her. The first day she managed a single block.
They kept going. Within a year she was walking three miles, five days a week. She walked into a gym for the first time, tried the machines, then eventually free weights. At 60 she entered her first competitions. People looked at the great-grandmother and assumed she wouldn’t finish the lift. She kept finishing them—and winning.
She rose at 3:30 a.m. three days a week to train with her coach Andrew “Bull” Stewart at Columbia City Fitness Center. Arthritis twisted her hands and she dealt with back and hip problems, but she refused to quit. By her late 60s she held world records in the bench and deadlift.
Over a 20-plus-year career she has won 26 world titles (WABDL and AAU), holds 23 AAU world records, and has never lost a meet. Bests include a 180 lb bench at 73 and a 279 lb deadlift at 70. In May 2024, at 85, she still competed and won again—deadlifting over 200 lbs after a hip replacement.
Her mantra, written on the wall next to her medals: “It is never given but earned.”
She has said that if you let whatever you’re dealing with control your life, you have no quality of life. At 85 she remains the only competitive powerlifter her age in the U.S. and is still getting after it.
Age doesn’t write the story. Consistency, purpose, and the decision to keep showing up do.