Group fitness lost one of its most recognized voices in 2020. Ellen de Werd was a top-10 Beachbody Master Trainer and a long-standing Fitness Director. Coaches across the industry knew her well. When the pandemic pressed pause, all of it disappeared. Conferences stopped. Live events dissolved. The stage lights went out.

However, this is not a comeback story. Instead, it is a blueprint for how coaches rebuild when a platform disappears. It is also a lesson in what stays when everything borrowed is gone.

When Identity Disappears Overnight

For 25 years, Ellen’s career had a rhythm: teach, travel, present, repeat.

For Ellen, losing Beachbody Live was not just a career disruption. It was personal. The role had held her expertise, her community, and her sense of belonging in the industry. When it disappeared, so did the structure that held those pieces together.

However, the real cost was not immediate clarity. Instead, it was confusion.

“I worried that my value in the industry was in jeopardy,” Ellen says. “I was afraid I was no longer important without that title.”

Still, recovery did not happen in a dramatic breakthrough. Instead, it unfolded slowly on a yoga mat. That in-between phase lasted longer than most coaches admit in public. The honest cost of losing a platform-built career is that silence. Not the peaceful kind. Indeed, the kind that echoes.

Building a Group Fitness Company With No Safety Net

WARRIOR began in 2020. There were no investors, no team, no plan. While the industry around her was contracting, Ellen wrote and illustrated courses by hand. As a result, funding came from her own savings: careful choices about where to spend and where to stretch.

However, turning that course work into a recognized group fitness company required precision. Meeting the cert standards of ACE, NASM, and AFAA was not optional. It also meant building systems for instructor intake. Those systems had to stand without legacy backing.

What Was at Stake

After 25 years, she had just lost the platform her career was built on. Specifically, starting over in a shrinking market: without backing, without a team, without an industry name. If WARRIOR did not work, there was no version two. Otherwise, she would quietly fade from a field she had spent her career building.

In practice, this is where most ideas stall. Not for lack of vision, but because the system requires more than most people plan for.

“I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training but deep down really struggled with my slightly ADHD temperament,” Ellen explains. “Traditional yoga classes felt boring. I had such a hard time sitting still. Therefore, I created WARRIOR Rhythm to provide a yoga-ish format for others who, like me, wished they loved yoga. It’s unconventional, bold, and different. It worked. People wanted it.”

The response surprised her. “People and instructors began to reach out,” she continues. “They asked about what they were seeing me do on a mat. It dawned on me that I had a real business chance.”

Ellen did not just create workouts. She built a framework that could be evaluated, accredited, and scaled.

How WARRIOR Builds Group Fitness Instructors

WARRIOR Rhythm is not easily defined. Indeed, that is exactly the point.

It blends yoga flows, breath work, HIIT, and strength work into a single group fitness class. The phrase Ellen uses, “where woo-woo meets WAAHOOOO,” captures something deeper than branding. For example, it reflects a collision of intensity and reflection: two states most group fitness formats treat as opposites.

However, the challenge is not creating that mix. Instead, the challenge is teaching instructors how to deliver it with integrity.

In WARRIOR training, coaches learn to do this without mental whiplash. They guide students from high effort into recovery, weaving in breath work. In practice, this means using language and pacing to guide nervous system shifts, not just physical transitions.

For instance, a pure HIIT class elevates stress hormones. While a pure yoga class can lower them, WARRIOR moves students through both states in a single session. It teaches the body not just how to push, but how to recover. As a result, that ability to shift becomes a skill students carry outside the studio.

The Lesson From the Yoga Mat

Six years ago, Ellen de Werd was sitting on a yoga mat. She was processing the loss of a platform that had defined her career.

Today, WARRIOR has 6 branded group fitness formats and spans 14 countries. Meanwhile, a network of master coaches supports the system. The company hosts its own yearly conference and retreat. As of March 2026, WARRIOR has its own studio.

“Opening the brick-and-mortar studio feels like the peak of it all,” Ellen says. “The keys to the front door feel like a symbol of my entire career. We now have a headquarters. But more than that, a home.”

But the distance between those two moments is not explained by strategy alone. Instead, it is explained by one truth: platforms can disappear. However, skill, perspective, and voice do not.

What Group Fitness Coaches Keep After a Platform Disappears

For coaches, the instinct is to search. Ellen’s journey says: build from what cannot be taken.

The industry will continue to shift. Business models will evolve. Platforms will rise and fall. However, the coaches who endure ask better questions. They build something that belongs entirely to them.

In short, for coaches in this field, everything can be revoked. What you build from the ground up cannot.

Not borrowed, not licensed, not dependent.

Just built.

Hers.