8 Weeks of Plyometric Training Was Linked to More Match Running in 18 U20 Players

Adding plyometric training to normal soccer practice was followed by substantial increases in six match running measures in 18 elite under-20 players living at about 2,000 metres. An eight-week block of regular training alone moved only one of the same six.

Plyometric Training added twice a week to regular soccer practice was linked to higher match running output in 18 elite under-20 male players based at moderate altitude, according to a 16-week study published on September 24, 2026 in BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation.

The study came from a group led at the School of Physical Education and Sports Science, South China Normal University, in Guangzhou, with co-authors at three further institutions. Eighteen elite academy outfield players took part, with a mean age of 18.4 years, a mean height of 176.4 centimetres, a mean body mass of 71.6 kilograms and a mean 9.1 years of training experience.

All of them resided and trained continuously at roughly 2,000 metres, which is the part of the design the authors say has been missing from earlier work. The transfer of plyometric training to isolated tests such as jumps and short sprints is well established; what happens to running output in an actual match, under chronic moderate-altitude conditions, was the open question.

The answer, in this sample, was that the eight weeks containing plyometric training were followed by substantial increases in all six match running variables the team tracked, while the eight weeks of regular soccer training alone produced trivial or unclear changes in five of them.

How the Plyometric Training Block Was Structured

The added work was deliberately small. Plyometric training was performed twice per week at progressive moderate-to-high intensity, in sessions lasting approximately 20 to 25 minutes, on top of the squad practice the players were already doing.

Content was conventional rather than exotic: bilateral and unilateral hopping, countermovement jumps, horizontal hops, bounding and sprint drills. That matters for interpretation, because it means the result does not rest on specialist equipment or an unusual protocol that a normal academy could not copy.

What Changed During the Regular Training Phase Alone

The first eight weeks acted as the comparison block. Following regular soccer training, the authors report trivial or unclear changes in distance per minute, with an effect size and 95 percent confidence limits of 0.02 plus or minus 0.19, in high-speed running distance at 0.13 plus or minus 0.43, in sprint distance at 0.01 plus or minus 0.55, in explosive accelerations at 0.03 plus or minus 0.34 and in explosive decelerations at 0.13 plus or minus 0.37.

One measure did move without any plyometric training in the mix. Top speed rose substantially in that first phase, at 0.63 plus or minus 0.12. The authors flag that a fixed sequential design cannot separate such a change from seasonal or time-related influences.

What Changed After the Plyometric Training Phase

In the second eight weeks the picture was uniform. Substantial increases appeared in distance per minute at 1.66 plus or minus 0.19, top speed at 1.66 plus or minus 0.12, sprint distance at 1.39 plus or minus 0.51, high-speed running distance at 1.18 plus or minus 0.40, explosive decelerations at 1.15 plus or minus 0.38 and explosive accelerations at 1.03 plus or minus 0.33.

The pattern is worth reading carefully. Distance per minute is a whole-match density measure, while sprint distance and explosive accelerations describe the sharpest few seconds of play. Both ends of that range shifted together, which is not what a purely fitness-driven or purely tactical explanation would predict.

The six measures also carry different amounts of noise. Distance per minute accumulates across a whole match and is comparatively stable, which is why its narrow confidence limits of plus or minus 0.19 stand out. Sprint distance depends on a handful of discrete efforts and carried the widest limits in both phases, at plus or minus 0.55 and then plus or minus 0.51. Reading those limits alongside the point estimates keeps the sprint result in proportion.

Why the Altitude Setting Matters

Living and training at about 2,000 metres changes the physiological backdrop against which any training block is judged. The authors framed the study around whether the benefits of plyometric training would still transfer to match running under chronic moderate-altitude exposure, rather than assuming that sea-level findings carry over.

That question sits next to a separate literature on altitude as a deliberate stimulus, which FLM has covered through a 62-study review of hypoxic training and aerobic capacity. Here altitude was the environment the squad happened to live in, not the intervention.

Altitude also complicates the comparison in a way this design cannot resolve. Players adapted to 2,000 metres may express plyometric training gains differently from a sea-level squad, and there is no sea-level arm here to check that against.

What a Sequential Design Cannot Rule Out

This was a quasi-experimental, non-randomized, sequential within-subject study, and the authors are direct about what that costs. In their words, the study employed a non-randomized, sequential design with a fixed intervention order, which does not completely exclude potential time or seasonal effects.

The absence of a parallel randomized control group, they add, limits the ability to establish causal inference regarding the isolated effects of the plyometric intervention. Because the plyometric training phase always came second, eight extra weeks of competitive season and accumulated squad fitness are bundled into the comparison.

What Plyometric Training Means for Non-Elite Athletes

The population here is narrow: 18 male academy players with about nine years of training behind them, playing friendly matches at altitude. Nothing in the design supports a claim about recreational players, women, older athletes or anyone at sea level, and the transfer of plyometric training to match output in those groups remains untested by this paper.

What does generalise is the shape of the intervention. Two short sessions a week of jumps, hops, bounding and sprint drills, added rather than substituted, is a modest dose. Comparable jump and sprint improvements have been reported in untrained teenagers after a bodyweight suspension training programme, and in high-level athletes after sprint interval training.

General, non-individualised points for anyone considering explosive work:

• Plyometric training is high-impact by nature; landings load tendons and joints, so progression from low to higher intensity is the norm in supervised programmes, as it was here.
• The dose in this study was small. Twenty to 25 minutes twice a week was added to existing practice, not layered on top of an already maximal week.
• Explosive work does not replace aerobic conditioning; the players kept their regular soccer training throughout both phases.
• Anyone with a current lower-limb injury, or returning from one, should get individual clearance before adding jumping volume.

For a sense of how other short, intense blocks perform in young team-sport athletes, FLM has also covered a trial in which multimodal high-intensity interval work raised estimated aerobic capacity in adolescent basketball players. That study shared this one’s core limitation, a small sample, and the same need for replication before the numbers are treated as settled.