Best form of cardio to maintain muscle-mass

Tommy arrived at the gym Wednesday morning, all excited and smiling as he was looking forward to dinner in the evening. The focus of his training was arms and abs. He went to the locker room with his bag to put his stuff into the locker. After he had put on his shoes, he headed to start his routine with resistance bands to warm up.

Tommy was holding the plank position to train his abs, feeling how his body was heating up and the engagement of his abs. He lifted his head up to see straight and noticed a bodybuilder who had increased the treadmill to an incline and was sprinting.

When the guy stopped sprinting, he could see he was completely out of air and went straight back to sprinting. “Damn, it looks hard,” thought Tommy. Tommy leaned towards a fellow gym-goer who was sitting next to him to ask, “Do you know why the guy on the treadmill is sprinting?”

The fellow gym-goer smiled, wiping sweat from his forehead, and answered Tommy, “Yeah, it’s brutal, but it works wonders for cardio without sacrificing muscle.”

“Oh yeah, that makes sense. I remember it now when you say it,” said Tommy. He was curious about the method and began to have thoughts about how many times you have to do it and for how long you are running.

Tommy went over to the cable machine to start training his arms. As he was training his arms on the cable machine, he looked at the treadmill, thinking about the guy he saw earlier sprinting on the treadmill. The thoughts were running, as Tommy thought about how hard and exhausting it might be to keep sprinting with barely any rest.

The thoughts kept going and it felt like hypnosis. Tommy kept staring at the treadmill and forgot completely that he was doing bicep curls. He lost focus and kept doing repetitions, and slowly began to feel the burn in his biceps. Tommy couldn’t stand the burn anymore and snapped out of his thoughts to stop the exercise, feeling how his biceps were contracted. Tommy thought to himself, how many repetitions did I do, as he was stretching his arms.

Thirty minutes later, Tommy finished his arm session and went to the treadmill. He was unsure whether or not he should do it, as doubt started creeping in. Tommy thought that it would be so hard. He thought about what if he couldn’t manage to run fast enough or properly control the high speed. Tommy started walking on the treadmill and set it to an incline.

Tommy slowly turned up the speed and soon started sprinting for 10 seconds, and as he hit the 10 seconds, he jumped up to place his feet on each side to stop the treadmill. Tommy was breathing heavily and thought, “Oh damn, this is hard.” The sweat was dripping down his face and he could feel how it heated up his body.

With only a 30-second break, Tommy continued to sprint 10 times with breaks in between.

Tommy felt it was finally over after he finished the 10th sprint. He was completely out of breath and swimming in his own sweat. As he thought to himself, never again will he do this. It was quite lighter to train for the race. After a few minutes, Tommy began to feel quite good as he got his breath again.