[Scott Johnston]

Josh:

You are not alone in getting very sore from the ME workouts.  I suspect that in the past 16 years of endurance training you had a lot of muscle fiber type shift to more ST from FT. That is a well documented phenomenon.  The ME makes people sore due to the eccentric loading in the jumping exercises.  To mitigate the soreness: Do fewer sets,  jump less dynamically and do not add extra weight.  You can still make good gains with a less aggressive approach.  Hopefully even with the soreness you have seen some performance gains on your easy runs.

As for the hill sprints:  I’ve not heard of people getting sore for those. It might be that these too need to be dialed back in intensity to allow you more time to adapt.

Soreness from the ME and soreness from the Hill Sprints might be carrying over from one of these workouts to the other and causing you not to adapt.  Don’t blindly follow the plan (or any plan).  Adjust it according to how you respond to it.  That Big Vert plan was one of our best selling plans at UA and we got a great deal of very positive feedback about its effectiveness.  We coach using those same principles. So we know the principles work. But, if you are not seeing gains or failing to adapt you need to be willing to adjust to make it work for you.  The first place to start is to dial back on the intensity of these 2 workouts so you are not so sore.

I hope this helps,

Scott