Meta-Analysis on Plyometric Training Effects for Female Team-Sport Athletes

A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis by Zhuo Zeng synthesizes evidence from 36 studies involving 921 participants. It examines the effects of plyometric training on strength, jumping, sprinting, throwing, and agility outcomes in female team-sport athletes. The work explores potential moderators like training frequency, duration, and ground contacts.

Use Cases

• Evaluating the efficacy of plyometric training for improving specific performance metrics like vertical jump and sprint speed.
• Investigating the influence of programming variables such as intervention duration on training outcomes.
• Assessing the certainty of evidence for plyometric training adaptations across different athletic skills.
• Informing training program design for female team-sport athletes based on aggregated research findings.

Strengths

• Aggregates findings from 36 studies with a total of 921 participants.
• Employs a three-level random-effects meta-analysis with cluster-robust variance estimation for statistical rigor.
• Provides standardized mean difference (SMD) effect sizes for multiple outcomes, such as agility (SMD = -1.09) and throwing (SMD = 0.91).
• Assesses certainty of evidence using the GRADE framework.

Limitations

• The primary file format is DOCX, which contains textual analysis rather than raw, structured data tables.
• Row and column counts for any underlying data are unknown, limiting suitability assessment for direct computational analysis.
• The authors note evidence certainty ranges from very low to moderate and call for larger, more diverse samples in future studies.

Provenance

Source

Zhuo Zeng via figshare.

Collection Method

Systematic review and three-level meta-analysis of randomized and non-randomized controlled trials.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-05.