Does plyometric training make female athletes faster and jump higher?

A 2026 meta-analysis of 31 studies and 609 adult female team-sport athletes found that plyometric jump training beat control groups on jump height, sprint speed and agility. Countermovement jump height improved with an effect size of 0.550, and agility gains were larger still. If you play a team sport or train for power, adding jumps for more than six weeks looks like a sound, evidence-backed choice.

Plyometric jump training means short, explosive jumps: hops, bounds, box jumps and drop jumps. A new review in Sports Medicine Open pooled the studies that tested it in adult women who play team sports. Here is what it did, what it found and how far you can trust it.

What did the study do?

Lane et al. 2026 ran a systematic review and meta-analysis. A meta-analysis pools the results of many studies into one estimate. The team searched four databases up to March 2026.

Item	Detail
Who	Healthy adult female team-sport athletes, mean age 18 years or older
How many	31 studies, 609 participants, 25 studies pooled in the meta-analysis
Training	Plyometric jump programmes lasting at least 2 weeks
Comparison	A control group in every included study
Outcomes	Jump height, jump speed, reactive strength, sprint times, agility
Journal	Sports Medicine Open, 2026

Results were reported as Hedges' g effect sizes. An effect size tells you how big a change is compared with how much people normally vary. The authors also checked each study for risk of bias and rated how certain the evidence was.

What did it find?

Compared with the control groups, jump training improved every main outcome the review pooled.

1. Countermovement jump height: effect size 0.550. This is the classic standing vertical jump. A moderate gain means most athletes who trained with jumps out-jumped those who did not.
2. Drop jump reactive strength index: effect size 0.926. This measures how quickly you can land and bounce back up. A large effect suggests jump training is especially good at teaching fast, springy ground contacts.
3. Sprint times: effect sizes of 0.712 over 10 m, 0.709 over 20 m and 1.018 over 30 m. The athletes got faster over short and medium sprints, the distances that matter most in team sports.
4. Agility: effect size 1.225 on the Illinois test and 0.965 on the T test. These are change-of-direction drills. They showed the largest gains in the review.
5. Longer programmes did better. Compared with programmes of 6 weeks or less, longer programmes favoured reactive strength, 10 m sprint time and Illinois agility time.

Safety looked acceptable but was not perfectly clean. Two studies reported that a total of three participants possibly sustained an injury during the training.

How does this compare with earlier evidence?

This is the first meta-analysis of plyometric training in female team-sport athletes covered here, so there is no earlier pooled result to compare it with. Two related reviews give useful context.

The first is Currier et al. 2023 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. It pooled 178 studies with 5097 people for strength, and 45% of them were women. It found that every resistance training prescription beat no exercise for strength and muscle growth. Lane et al. 2026 points the same way for a different kind of training: structured, progressive work beats doing nothing extra, and it works in women. The difference is the target. Currier looked at strength and muscle size, while Lane looked at speed, jumping and agility. The two reviews fit together rather than compete.

The second is McNulty et al. 2020 in Sports Medicine. It reviewed 78 studies on the menstrual cycle and exercise performance. It found only a trivial drop in performance in the early follicular phase, with a pooled effect size of -0.06. The authors said general guidelines could not be formed from it. That matters here because women are often told to plan training around the cycle. The new review suggests the bigger lever for performance is the training itself, sustained over enough weeks.

What are the limits?

• Small studies. 609 athletes spread across 31 studies means the average study was small.
• Mixed quality. Two studies had high risk of bias, 20 had moderate risk and 9 had low risk. The certainty of evidence was rated low to moderate.
• Results varied. Variation between studies was low in some analyses but up to 73.1% in others. That means the size of the benefit differed a lot between programmes and teams.
• Narrow population. All participants were adult female team-sport athletes. The results may not apply to beginners, older adults, or people who only lift in a gym.
• Performance tests, not games. Jump and sprint tests are useful markers, but they are not the same as playing better in a match.
• Little programme detail. The review's abstract does not give the exact programmes behind the best results, so it cannot tell you a precise number of jumps or sessions.

What should you do with it?

1. Team-sport athletes: consider adding jump training alongside your regular practice. The review found gains in jump height, sprint speed and agility compared with control groups.
2. Plan for more than six weeks: programmes longer than 6 weeks favoured reactive strength, short sprints and agility. A two-week block is unlikely to show you much.
3. Lifters chasing power: jumps train a different quality than heavy lifting does. Strength training builds strength and muscle, while jump training appears to sharpen speed and bounce.
4. Respect the injury signal: a few injuries were reported, so build up gradually, land with control and stop if anything hurts.

Does plyometric training work for women who are not athletes?

This review cannot answer that, because it only included adult female team-sport athletes. They were already trained, healthy and used to running and jumping. If you are new to training, the safer reading is that jumping can help, but you will need a gentler start than these athletes had.

Should I time jump training to my menstrual cycle?

The evidence does not support strict cycle-based planning for performance. McNulty et al. 2020 found only a trivial reduction in performance in the early follicular phase and said general guidelines could not be formed. Training consistently over enough weeks looks more important than timing.

Is plyometric training safe?

In this review, two studies reported that a total of three participants possibly sustained an injury. That is a low number, but it is not zero. Jumping places high loads on the joints, so progress slowly and do not train through pain.

Sources

• Lane et al. 2026, Sports Medicine Open
• Currier et al. 2023, British Journal of Sports Medicine
• McNulty et al. 2020, Sports Medicine

This brief was drafted with AI from the sources listed above and passed automated source checks before publishing. Pedro Rodrigues, founder of Actus, is the responsible author.

Educational content, not medical advice. Training and diet changes carry risk; stop if you feel pain and talk to a physician before changing your program.