THE EFFECT OF PLYOMETRIC TRAINING ON GYMNASTS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS

The jumping action plays a fundamental role in the performance of all gymnastics modalities, most of which are plyometric in nature. This is based on the stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) and leads to an improvement in the reactive capacity of the muscles involved. The objectives are (1) to review the state of the scientific literature on plyometric training in gymnasts; and (2) to identify which moderating variables are most important. A systematic review was carried out according to the PRISMA guidelines in the WoS, Scopus, PubMed and SportDiscus databases. Seventy-two papers were identified, with 54 remaining after removing duplicates. Finally, 10 papers that met the inclusion criteria were included, of which only 7 were used for meta-analysis. Review Manager 5.4 software was used. The effects of plyometric training on countermovement jump (CMJ) and drop jump (DJ), as well as the moderating variables of the training, were analysed. Plyometric training was applied to gymnasts aged 8.1 ± 0.7 to 13 ± 2 years. Training lasted at least 8 weeks (ME = 9.5) with 1 to 3 weekly sessions, typically 2. Session durations ranged from 7to 90 minutes, with 54to 278 jumps per session (Me = 175). Rest periods between sets were 15to 60 seconds, and between exercises, 1to 5 minutes. Protocols included bilateral and unilateral exercises, and short SSC exercises were combined with long SSC exercises. It is confirmed that plyometric training improves the performance of CMJ and DJ in gymnasts, with greater improvement observed in the latter. Subgroup analyses do not provide reliable results due to the small number of studies, although differences were found between surfaces and in the number of sets.