Carb Cycling Is the Open Secret in the Industry. If You Know How to Utilize It, It’s One of the Easiest Ways to Get in Shape Fast

In the high-stakes world of fashion and fitness, one trainer has quietly revolutionized how models and athletes prepare their bodies.

Joe Holder, the man behind some of Victoria’s Secret’s most iconic physiques, is pulling back the curtain on what actually works—and what’s been sabotaging women’s fitness goals for years.

In a recent conversation, Holder shared the training philosophy that transformed bodies like Naomi Campbell’s, Bella Hadid’s, and an entire roster of VS Angels.

And his approach might surprise anyone who thinks harder automatically means better.

The Hard Truth About Working Out Hard

When Holder first started training Victoria’s Secret models, he did something that shocked the industry: he made them train like athletes, but not in the way most people expected.

I was training all the VS girls, but like I was making them do like real athlete stuff and everybody was like, “Who is this kid?”

The biggest revelation? These elite models weren’t crushing themselves with brutal workouts every single day.

Holder recalls a telling moment when a friend visited during one of Naomi Campbell’s training sessions.

One of my buddies came in the gym and one of the days it was more of a chill session. He was like, “Oh, I thought Naomi would always be working out hard.” And that’s kind of the go-go mentality that’s detrimental.

This relentless approach has consequences that extend far beyond sore muscles. According to Holder, the high-intensity training revolution of the 2010s left a wake of damaged metabolisms and exhausted women.

We’ve seen the impact the HIT revolution in the 2010s, early 2000s had on women. A lot of popups of thyroid issues, adrenal fatigue, all that. And it’s because people were going too hard.

Why Women Get Puffy When They Work Out

One of the most common complaints Holder hears from women has a surprisingly simple explanation—one that often leads to exactly the wrong response.

Women always ask, “Why do I get puffy when I work out?”

The answer lies in understanding how the body responds to consistent stress without adequate recovery time.

When women push too hard, too often, their bodies enter a defensive state. The puffiness isn’t a sign they need to work harder—it’s a red flag that they need to pull back.

For women, if you’re constantly going back to back to back to back, what ends up happening? You look a little bit puffier. You’re not sleeping as well. Those things aren’t working. You got to give your body enough time to bounce back.

The timeline for recovery is longer than most people realize. Sleeping one night between workouts doesn’t automatically reset the body.

Just because you work out on Monday, go to sleep, and then work out again on Tuesday doesn’t mean that’s giving the body enough time.

Holder calls this phenomenon “the bloat phase,” and he’s developed a specific protocol to navigate it. The key is patience paired with strategic programming.

According to Holder, women who stick with his approach typically see dramatic changes around the three to five week mark—sometimes dropping four to eight pounds seemingly overnight as their bodies finally complete the recovery process.

Consistency Beats Intensity Every Time

Holder’s philosophy centers on a concept that contradicts much of modern fitness culture: consistency matters more than difficulty.

Professional athletes, despite what social media might suggest, don’t maintain peak intensity year-round. They cycle through phases of general preparation, building work capacity, and strategic peaks.

The workout itself serves as a stress signal to the body. The actual adaptation—the changes people want to see—happens during recovery.

Holder recommends most people need two to three days to truly recover from a genuinely hard workout. During that recovery window, lighter activity actually supports the adaptation process rather than hindering it.

This approach proved transformative for comedian Heidi Gardner when she came to Holder frustrated and exhausted from doing 45-minute high-intensity workouts daily without seeing results.

She came to me one time cuz she was training for she had to walk a carpet and she was frustrated. She was dejected. She was sad. She’s like, “I’ve been working out so hard and it I just seem to be getting worse. I don’t know what’s going on.”

The solution wasn’t pushing harder. It was implementing a strategic structure: one hard workout every four sessions, with the rest focused on strength training and aerobic recovery work.

The Victoria’s Secret Prep Protocol

When preparing models for the Victoria’s Secret runway, Holder implemented a phased approach that borrowed directly from athletic training methodology.

Phase One: General Preparation

The first phase focuses on building work capacity without overwhelming the system. This involves concurrent training—mixing strength work with both aerobic and anaerobic conditioning.

The workouts don’t need to be crushing. The goal is simply getting the body accustomed to consistent activity.

Phase Two: Strength Building

As models enter a caloric deficit for the show, the priority shifts to preserving muscle mass through legitimate strength training.

Holder’s prescription contradicts common advice: heavier weights for five to eight reps with longer rest periods between sets—sometimes up to three minutes.

This approach maintains muscle while the body composition shifts through fat loss, creating the defined look cameras capture so effectively.

Phase Three: Power and Polish

The final phase introduces power training through jumping, medicine ball throws, and explosive movements.

This creates what Holder calls “neurogenic tone”—teaching the brain to activate muscles efficiently. On the runway, this translates to muscles that fire naturally and look defined under stage lighting as models move.

The Nutrition Secret: Carb Cycling

Beyond training, Holder relies on what he calls “the open secret in the industry” for rapid body composition changes.

Carb cycling is like the open secret in the industry. If you know how to utilize it, it’s one of the easiest ways to get in shape fast.

The principle is straightforward: time carbohydrate intake according to workout intensity.

Higher intensity training days or recovery days following hard workouts warrant more carbohydrates to replenish glycogen stores and support muscle fullness. Lower intensity days call for reduced carbohydrate intake, promoting metabolic flexibility.

Holder also implements circadian rhythm eating—using light exposure as a guide for meal timing rather than rigid intermittent fasting windows.

First meals typically come one to two hours after waking, and final meals finish at least two hours before bed. This approach supports natural digestive rhythms and promotes regularity.

Rethinking Female-Specific Training

One critical distinction Holder emphasizes: women don’t respond to training stress the same way men do.

The fitness industry has largely operated on protocols developed for and tested on male athletes, then applied universally without accounting for hormonal and physiological differences.

Recovery timelines differ. Hormonal fluctuations create varying windows for optimal training stimulus. The psychological relationship with exercise often carries different baggage shaped by societal pressures around appearance.

Holder points to concerning trends in dysmorphia that manifest differently across genders but share a common root in industries preying on insecurity.

Women have been introduced to kind of dysmorphia at a very much younger age than men like men do get dysmorphia but it’s more so in the sense of in in the sense of like muscle size and things like that. Women are kind of nitpicked from very early on both figuratively and literally.

What Actually Matters for Results

Despite all the complexity, Holder’s framework distills to what he calls “the big three” across physical, mental, and emotional dimensions.

Physical wellness encompasses diet, exercise, and sleep. These elements occur daily and remain largely within individual control.

Mental wellness involves building resilience—what Holder describes as “bulletproofing your cup” against inevitable stressors.

Emotional wellness adds purpose and qualitative meaning to lived experience.

Starting with elements under direct control teaches agency and creates momentum. Once those foundations solidify, energy naturally extends to addressing other wellness dimensions like financial health, relationships, and environment.

The Path Forward

Holder’s vision for fitness culture involves moving past blanket prescriptions toward individualized, clearly defined approaches grounded in both science and somatic awareness.

He advocates for regular blood work, journaling about how foods and activities actually feel, and asking better questions than “Is this healthy?”

Health isn’t a state achieved through specific foods or workout protocols—it’s a dynamic quality of being that individuals must discover for themselves.

There’s no such thing as a healthy food. It’s just that a food just can be healthpromoting. So what are the foods that will promote health in me?

For women specifically, this means rejecting the punishment model of fitness and recognizing that bodies require genuine nourishment and strategic recovery to transform.

The models walking Victoria’s Secret runways weren’t crushing themselves daily. They were training smart, eating strategically, and giving their bodies time to adapt.

That same approach remains available to anyone willing to trade intensity addiction for intelligent programming.