Margot Robbie has captured widespread attention for both her remarkable acting talent and her striking appearance. While promoting her latest movie, Wuthering Heights, the 35-year-old former Neighbours star showcased a sculpted figure that has sparked curiosity about her fitness approach. This transformation is especially notable as it comes less than a year after she gave birth to her first child, a baby boy, with her husband Tom Ackerley in October 2024, whose name the couple has chosen to keep private.
Personal trainer David Higgins has recently disclosed the intensive fitness methods behind Margot’s impressive post-pregnancy physique, revealing details about her workout and diet that contribute to her strength and tone.
The Core Elements of Margot Robbie’s Fitness Regimen
Margot’s fitness routine hinges on a blend of strength training and reformer Pilates, a combination that personal trainer David Higgins emphasizes for its effectiveness. Before each workout, she dedicates five minutes to foam rolling to warm up her muscles. Her sessions typically consist of 15 repetitions of each exercise, including supine chest presses, bent-over rowing, standing bicep curls, seated shoulder presses, supine skull crushers, and movements targeting both sides of her body.
Her routine also features a demanding 100-rep ab challenge, incorporating 20 crunches, toe taps on each side, and curtsy lunges performed on both legs. Remarkably, this abdominal workout is repeated five times per session, equating to 500 total reps. Higgins highlights her impressive core strength, noting that Margot can maintain a plank position for four minutes and ten seconds—a feat that underscores her fitness level.
Reformer Pilates and Strength Training: Tailored to Margot’s Needs
A long-time advocate of reformer Pilates, Margot prefers this alongside strength training depending on how her body feels on any given day. She once shared with The Telegraph,
“If I’m making a conscious effort to exercise, I work with a Pilates trainer on a reformer machine, and that suits me and my body best.”
David Higgins explained that during Pilates sessions, they focus more on duration than repetition, usually spending around two minutes on each exercise.
While Margot avoids traditional cardio workouts, Higgins describes how her full-body strength sessions provide a cardiovascular benefit:
“By doing a full-body workout, your heart has to work hard to redirect the blood to the correct part of your body as and when you work it – from your upper-body to your lower-, for example,”
he said. This strategic approach supports both muscle toning and cardiovascular health without typical cardio activities.
Margot’s Focused Core and Upper Body Workouts
Strengthening her upper body and core is fundamental to Margot’s fitness. One move she incorporates is skull crushers performed on a bench, her legs positioned in a table top stance at 90 degrees. This, paired with her intensive ab challenge, contributes to her firm, athletic silhouette. The combination of targeted exercises aligns with her goal of building strength over mere slimness.
A Balanced Yet Disciplined Approach to Diet
Margot’s diet mirrors her workout dedication, especially as she prepares for film roles or promotional events. She typically starts her day with porridge topped with blackberries or a nutrient-rich “green machine” smoothie blending kale and apple. Lunchtime meals often feature lean proteins such as lemon chicken with brown rice or mackerel salad with fresh vegetables like tomatoes and cucumber. For dinner, she prefers options like tuna steaks with sweet potato or vegetable hot pots paired with rice noodles.
Despite the disciplined approach during lead-ups to projects, Margot admits she enjoys indulgences when not preparing for roles. In a candid interview with Emirates Woman, she stated,
“I’m not good at doing moderation. I get miserable if I don’t eat. I can’t just have a salad every day and a half a glass of wine every second day. I can’t do it.”
However, when working toward a specific physique, she avoids foods high in saturated fats, fast food, sugary drinks, and chocolate, choosing a ‘clean’ diet instead.
Consistency and Commitment Behind the Scenes
David Higgins and Margot Robbie have collaborated consistently over several years, particularly during intensive preparation periods such as the 12 to 15-week training for her role in Barbie. Their sessions usually run five days per week, each lasting between 45 and 60 minutes. This routine flexibility allows Margot to integrate workouts around her demanding schedule efficiently.
Higgins emphasized the importance of this consistency:
“We would train together five days a week, for 45-60 mins each time,”
he noted. This disciplined regimen underscores how Margot maintains her athleticism even while managing a busy career and personal life.
Prioritizing Strength Over Thinness
Throughout her career, Margot Robbie has made it clear that her fitness goals focus on strength rather than achieving an unnaturally thin frame. Ahead of her 2016 film The Legend of Tarzan, where she played Jane, she explained her choice to avoid weight loss, saying,
“It’s the 19th century (in the film) – if she’s got a bit of weight on her, it’s probably a good thing.”
Her decision to skip some training to spend time at London pubs reflected her preference for a healthy, authentic body image over conforming to unrealistic expectations for film roles.
Additional Training Interests: Boxing and Leg Work
Margot’s fitness variety extends beyond Pilates and strength training into activities like boxing and leg-focused workouts. These elements became part of her regimen while preparing for earlier roles, such as 2016’s Suicide Squad, enabling her to build powerful muscle tone and endurance. Such cross-training supports her overall fitness and adds diversity to her routine.
Implications of Margot Robbie’s Fitness Strategy
Margot Robbie’s approach to fitness, emphasizing strength training, reformer Pilates, and a disciplined but realistic diet, offers a model of post-pregnancy physical transformation that values health and capability over mere aesthetics. Her routine highlights the importance of core strength, exercise consistency, and honest self-care. As she continues to balance motherhood with her high-profile career, Margot’s fitness methods and mindset are likely to inspire others seeking sustainable and effective workout strategies.
