The dancer and Body By Simone creator has trained A-listers like Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Sandra Bullock, and Khloe Kardashian, just to name a few. These days, De La Rue is focused on feeling good from the inside out. “I’ve evolved personally and as a woman,” De La Rue says. “I’m a mother now and I’m also a life coach. I’m focusing a lot of my work now on how exercise makes us feel rather than how exercise makes us look.” The trainer has been open and honest about mental health, particularly during the pandemic, and now she’s expanding her health and wellness coaching business alongside personal training. For De La Rue, everything is connected. “One of the reasons why people don’t reach their fitness goals is because they’re not doing the mental, emotional, and spiritual work that has to go alongside the physical transformation,” she says. De La Rue was born in England and grew up in Australia. She worked as a dancer professionally in London’s West End and then on Broadway in New York City. She even performed in an opening number at the Academy Awards. “That is hilarious because then I ended up training a lot of the [celebs] who actually saw me dance in the opening number of the Oscars—it’s funny how life is,” De La Rue says. After 18 years of performing, she decided to become her own boss. “I didn’t want to have anyone else be in control of my destiny anymore. I wanted to reclaim my power.” At 36, she dove headfirst into launching her brand Body By Simone and opened her first studio in New York City in 2011. “When I look back now, that that young woman was hungry, ambitious, driven—maybe a little bit naïve—I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into," De La Rue says. “But I just had such a passion for exercise. I had a passion for teaching women how to dance. I had a passion for empowering women. That’s really what led me to build Body by Simone.” She eventually opened two more studios in southern California, as well as one In London. She launched an app and was on E!’s reality show “Revenge Body with Khloe Kardashian.” She was at the height of her career when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. “Things were incredible, actually, until the pandemic,” she shares. “The pandemic forced me to stop and to close two of my studios.” The pandemic helped her to take a look at her journey thus far, and appreciate how far she had come. “Did I ever actually realize how successful I was?” De La Rue tells us. “To realize what a great job I was doing? I was so driven and I didn’t stop to smell the roses for so long. The last year-and-a-half, two years has really forced me to do that.” The last two years have also brought her immense joy in the form of her son, Oscar Oliver Thompson. De La Rue found out she was pregnant at 43 years old and welcomed Oscar on March 29, 2019. Now Oscar is two-and-a-half years old, and De La Rue balances motherhood and her business without full-time help. Follow along to see a couple of days in the life of trainer Simone De La Rue, how her son sometimes sneaks into celeb training sessions, what she eats for breakfast, and how she fills her busy days with gratitude. Monday 7 a.m. We’ve been awake since 6 a.m. Oscar comes into bed with my husband and me, and we have a cuddle. This is my favorite time of the day. It’s the one moment where I really practice gratitude and I literally thank the universe. I say that everything I need is in the bed with me. It just feels so safe and loving. I absolutely love this moment. We open the curtains—we’re currently living in between Los Angeles and Palm Springs right now—and we’ve got views of mountains and palm trees. We watch the sunrise have our cuddle. This is the only real moment of calm we have and then the chaos begins. 7:30 a.m. We get up and have breakfast. Oscar has porridge, and I will have eggs and possibly avocado on toast. I’ll get into my workout gear and we leave the house so I can start with my first client. 8 a.m. For my typical L.A. day, I’ll drive to the Brentwood Studio. I train one or two private training clients. We don’t have [childcare] help. We don’t have a nanny. My husband is back and forth between here and the U.K. at the moment. When he’s around, he will help me out, but then other times Oscar literally just sits at the studio. He’s been known to come into some of my private sessions with my clients. He will try to join in or just watch and, luckily, all of the clients I have are moms or have some experience with kids and are all very understanding and allow it, which is really nice. I only really allow him screen time If he comes to the studio with me, and I need him to sit there quietly. But he’s got puzzles. He’s into puzzles at the moment, and he loves them. In general, we’re always trying to stimulate his brain. He loves books. We’ve been reading a lot of books. Another mission of mine is to try and normalize children in the workforce—literally being able to bring them into the office with you as well as acknowledging women have responsibilities other than their job. In a lot of the life-coaching work that I’m doing, it’s really trying to get women back into the workforce and back into having a purpose for themselves. Whether there needs to be childcare in the office or [more flexible schedules], I’m pushing for something like that. I’m very lucky that I’m the boss and he can come to the studio with me. 10 a.m. I have a break and then I film for the app for about two to three hours. I just finished the eight-week program, which is an online version of my book. And now I’m doing a six-week postnatal program. I had a C-section and I was just absolutely amazed that I couldn’t even walk afterward—how intrusive that surgery was. I was extremely fit beforehand. I worked out every day throughout my pregnancy, and actually, even walked to the hospital to give birth. I was also nervous and scared [to workout] after my C-section. I was like, can I lift my legs? Is it going to hurt to just stand up and get out of bed? I was very, very cautious coming back, and it took me a long time to do any plank work or anything like that. I want to make sure that I am providing the knowledge for women who were in the same position as I was. When I created the Body By Simone Prenatal workout in 2019, I didn’t think that there was a lot of information out there for women. So basically this new [postnatal] six-week program—once you get clearance from your doctor—slowly helps you rebuild your core strength. It helps you connect to your body, work on your posture, and rebuild your posterior chain. It also gives you energy—you’re so sleep-deprived in the first six to 12 weeks, you don’t even know what your name is. I’m trying to give you some energy and also, it’s about carving out some time for yourself that you don’t have to give to anybody else. 1 p.m. I drive home and put Oscar down for his nap between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Now is the time I do a lot of my office work, and do all of my emails. 3:30 p.m. In the afternoon when Oscar is awake, that is his time. We will go to the park. We will do some kind of adventure together. We swim in the pool, or we will go for a walk. I devote this time to him. 5 p.m. We start making dinner. So my husband is actually the cook and he is an amazing cook. He cooks for us every night. And you know, people always ask me, what do you eat? I eat real foods, whole foods, and organic when possible. We always eat a protein, two vegetables, and a carbohydrate. He will always cook something delicious. We always sit down as a family, because that’s another really important thing to me. This is when we practice our moments of gratitude. We all talk about the rose and the thorn of the day—the rose being the highlight and the thorn being the not-so-great part. We’re teaching Oscar, as well. He understands what the rose is and we’re still trying to teach him what the thorn is. 6 p.m. It’s bath time. Oscar is into showers at the moment. It’s very cute. We shower together and he thinks he is a big boy, having a shower, so that’s cute. 7 p.m. Oscar goes to bed early, around 7 p.m. And I’m in bed early myself. I go to bed at about 9 p.m. at the latest! Tuesday 8 a.m. In Palm Springs, I have my life coaching clients. Right now, I do them via Zoom, so I’ll do a whole lot of Zoom meetings. 10 a.m. Getting motivated to workout is one of the hardest things. People look at me and other trainers and think we bounce out of bed every day, like “Woohoo! We can’t wait to work out!” Out of six days that we work out, maybe two or three feel like that, and then the other three might feel like we have to drag our [selves] out of bed. It’s important for people to know that everybody feels like that. That’s a normal feeling. One thing that I keep saying to clients and to myself is: focus on how exercise makes you feel. It gives you those good endorphins and that natural mood boost. You never really finish your workout and go, “Oh, I feel worse after that.” You usually always feel much better. Try to focus on the after feeling. Also, set yourself up for success. [That can] mean laying your clothes out the night before, finding an accountability partner, or finding an exercise program that you love and connect with. Make small shifts. Tell yourself, “I’m just going to work out for 10 minutes. That’s all I have to do.” Once you do that 10 minutes, you’re going to do 15, 20, or 30 minutes, because the hardest thing is just getting started. 1 p.m. When I’m not training, I have office days. When Oscar is napping, I work with my team because I’m still the CEO of Body by Simone. Sadly, since the pandemic, we’ve gone from four studios down to two. But we work on all the marketing a month out. We look at what classes are working. We do all the staff training with the trainers. There’s just always something to do. So, I’m kind of juggling two, two businesses—Body by Simone and also my life coaching—but they kind of work as one. Through my life coaching, it’s really about setting up people’s patterns and behavior. I can give anyone the tools. I can give someone a meal plan. I can give someone a workout program. But unless they are willing to do the work, they’re not going to see the change. There are different reasons why people fail. One is because they don’t believe they’re worthy. Two is because they end up cutting everything out and doing 10 classes a week for the first week and then they burn out. It’s looking at the roadblocks that people put in front of them, shifting their mindset, and setting them up for good behaviors. It’s about making the right choices. All of this comes down to self-love and self-worth, believe it or not.
