It doesn’t sound like you’re doing anything wrong. But it does sound that this gym ME work will help your leg strength a lot.

Cut the volume in half and see if that helps. If it’s still not enough, keep cutting the volume until you can still maintain your aerobic volume. Some soreness is okay, but it’s counter-productive to be sore for a week.

Less sets or less reps per set or easing the added weight? Or any of the above?

Yes. 🙂

If the DOMS is too severe, I would back off in the following order as required:

1. Reduce extra weight;
2. Reduce series. Instead of four series of six sets of ten reps, try two series;
3. Reduce sets. Instead of six sets per series, try three sets;
4. Reduce reps. Instead of ten reps per set, try five.

There’s nothing magic about my examples above. Really any reduction could work.

The two most important things are:

1. Only do so much ME that your general weekly base volume does not have to be reduced; and
2. Do at least two series in the ME workouts. The active recovery between series is an important part of the process. The strength work “wakes up” the fast-twitch fiber, and then the active recovery makes it work aerobically (so the theory goes).

Is Gym ME the Plan you are working on?

Similar to others here I experienced significant pain and stiffness from a recent ME session.

I’d adjusted upwards from doing an unweighted GYM ME 1x4x10x(box step, lunge, squat jump, split jump squat) to weighted ME from the Big Vert plan 2x6x10x(box step, split jump squat).

Hamstring on one side was exceptionally sore as was the tendon at the knee – missed a hill sprint session and long aerboic runs as a result.

Plenty of roll ball massage, cold water swimming, and a couple of long bike rides and it has eased out.

I suspect less variation in the exercises rather than the additional weight. I also noticed that with the GYM ME I was definitely maxing out my muscular strength before anything else. I didn’t experience this as much on the Big Vert session.

After the GYM based ME my legs were uncomfortable and sore (everywhere :-)), but no tendon pain. It all eased out with recovery runs & roll ball massage and I didn’t miss any other sessions.

I like to use stationary bike/turbo trainer for both warm-up & the active recovery.