Does Pilates Improve Your Vertical Jump? What the Research Actually Shows

No — not on its own. If you're asking whether mat or reformer Pilates will add inches to your vertical jump or real watts to your explosive power, the handful of controlled studies we actually have say mostly no. Pilates reliably improves core control, hip and hamstring mobility, and movement efficiency, and those things matter for athletes. But the jump-height and power numbers in the studies that measured them barely moved when Pilates was the only thing added to an athlete's training. If pure power is the goal, Pilates is a strong supporting player. It is not the lead.

What the Research Actually Shows

There isn't a deep body of research on Pilates and athletic power, but the studies that exist point the same direction. A study of 20 teenage female volleyball players added 30 minutes of mat Pilates twice a week, for eight weeks, on top of regular team training. Squat jump and countermovement jump height and power both improved over the eight weeks, but so did the control group's, who did no Pilates at all. There was no statistically significant interaction between group and time, meaning the researchers couldn't credit the gains to Pilates rather than to the regular volleyball training both groups were doing. Hamstring flexibility was the one measure that moved meaningfully more in the Pilates group.

A separate comparison of 56 teenage volleyball players, split between those with at least two years of regular Pilates practice and those with none, found no significant difference between the groups on sit-and-reach flexibility, squat jump, or countermovement jump — every comparison came back with a p-value above 0.05. The authors' own conclusion was blunt: a Pilates program, as commonly practiced, may not be enough on its own to meaningfully change lower-limb explosive strength.

The one study that found Pilates "worked" for jumping is also the one to read carefully. A six-week study of young basketball players split into a plyometrics-only group, a Pilates-only group, and a combined group. Pilates alone produced the smallest jump gain of the three; plyometrics alone did better; the combined group did best of all. That ordering is useful, but the paper has real problems — baseline jump scores weren't equal between groups to start with, no effect sizes are reported, and some pre- and post-test numbers are identical in a way that looks like a data error. Treat the ranking as suggestive, not settled.

Study	Who	Pilates alone, effect on jump/power
Teen volleyball, 8 weeks	20 female players	No significant difference vs. no-Pilates control
Teen volleyball, cross-sectional	56 female players	No significant difference, Pilates practitioners vs. non-practitioners
Youth basketball, 6 weeks	~45 players, three groups	Smallest gain of three groups (plyometrics and combined training did more) — data quality is weak

Why Power Training Works Differently

Vertical jump and explosive power come from a specific training stimulus: high force, produced fast, usually through a stretch-shortening cycle — the quick load-and-release you get in a depth jump, a bound, or a heavy, fast lift. That stimulus teaches the nervous system to recruit fast-twitch (Type II) fibers and improves what exercise scientists call rate of force development, which is really just how quickly you can produce force, not how much you can eventually produce if given all day. Plyometric drills and heavy strength training are built around that exact demand.

Pilates isn't built around it. The method's signature is a controlled tempo, continuous breath, and moderate spring resistance, all aimed at control and precision rather than speed. That's not a flaw — it's the point of the method — but it means the loading pattern that teaches your legs to explode off the ground mostly isn't present in a standard Pilates session. The reformer's springs give you resistance, not the fast eccentric-to-concentric shock that plyometric training relies on.

What Pilates Reliably Delivers

None of this means Pilates is useless to an athlete chasing performance — it just delivers a different kind of help.

• Deep core stabilization. Research cited by exercise physiologist Michele Olson, summarized in a roundup on Pilates and athletes, found Pilates reliably recruits the deep stabilizing muscles of the spine and pelvis — the ones that keep your trunk from leaking force when you plant, cut, or land.
• Hip and hamstring mobility. Both volleyball studies above found Pilates groups gained more sit-and-reach flexibility than non-Pilates groups, even when jump numbers didn't separate. That's a consistent finding across otherwise mixed research.
• Movement efficiency. The same roundup describes a study of 32 male runners who did 12 weeks of twice-weekly mat Pilates and improved their 5K times while showing reduced extraneous muscle activation — a sign of better "neuromuscular economy," or less wasted effort per stride.

Those are real, athletically useful adaptations. They're just not the same adaptation as a bigger vertical.

The Reformer and Jump Board: the Closest It Gets

If any piece of Pilates equipment comes close to power work, it's the jump board — a flat platform that clips onto the reformer so you can jump against spring resistance while lying on your back. It genuinely lets you do rebounding, bilateral-and-single-leg jump patterns with far less impact on the joints than jumping on the floor, which is exactly why it shows up in rehab and return-to-sport programs after a lower-body injury.

What it hasn't been shown to do, in anything we could find, is improve on-the-ground vertical jump the way floor-based plyometrics does. The spring load changes the mechanics of the jump — you're horizontal, and the springs assist the landing in a way the ground never will. It's a legitimate low-impact training tool and a smart bridge back to jumping after injury. It is not a plyometric substitute, and nobody should train it expecting a floor-jump carryover that hasn't been measured.

Combining Pilates With Real Power Training

The most useful signal in the basketball study, data problems and all, is the ordering: combined training beat plyometrics alone, which beat Pilates alone. That matches what most strength coaches would tell you from experience — Pilates and power training aren't competing methods, they're complementary ones, and the evidence (thin as it is) leans toward using both rather than picking one.

A workable split for an athlete who wants both power and the durability Pilates offers:

1. Two sessions a week of dedicated power work — depth jumps, bounds, loaded jump squats, or Olympic-lift variations, done when you're fresh, not after a long training day.
2. One or two Pilates sessions, mat or reformer, on separate days, focused on deep core control, hip mobility, and the small stabilizer work that keeps your landing mechanics clean.
3. In-season, lean toward reformer and mat work over jump-board sessions on the same day as a power session — stacking two forms of lower-body loading back to back adds fatigue you don't need before a game or meet.

Pilates will make you move better. It won't make you jump higher. Those are two different promises, and mixing them up is how athletes end up disappointed with a method that was never built to do that job.

Marisol Quintero

The Honest Verdict

If you came here hoping a Pilates class was secretly the missing piece for your vertical, I'd rather tell you straight than sell you a shortcut: the research doesn't back that up. Add Pilates to your week and you'll likely move with more control, land more cleanly, stay more flexible through your hips and hamstrings, and — if the runner data holds up for your sport — waste less energy per rep or per stride. Those are genuine performance benefits, and over a full season they add up to fewer tweaked hamstrings and better movement quality under fatigue.

But if the number you actually care about is how high you can jump or how fast you can produce force, go do the training built for that: plyometrics, heavy strength work, sport-specific power drills, with Pilates sitting alongside it rather than standing in for it. That's not Pilates falling short. It's just not what the method was designed to do, and the honest answer is worth more than the convenient one.

Frequently asked

Does Pilates increase vertical jump height?

The controlled studies on young athletes found no significant difference in jump height between those who added Pilates and those who didn't. Pilates improved flexibility in those same studies, but not the explosive numbers.

Can Pilates build explosive power for sports?

Not reliably on its own. Explosive power depends on high-velocity, high-force training like plyometrics or heavy lifting, and Pilates's controlled tempo isn't built to deliver that kind of stimulus.

Is the Pilates reformer jump board useful for athletes?

It's a genuinely useful tool for low-impact jump-pattern work and return-to-sport conditioning. No study has shown it increases on-ground vertical jump, so it's best treated as a complement rather than a plyometric replacement.

What's the best way to use Pilates if my goal is athletic power?

Keep dedicated plyometric or strength sessions for power, and use Pilates on separate days for core stability, hip and hamstring mobility, and recovery. The research suggesting the biggest jump gains came from combining both, not from either alone.