Why jump training is ‘the most effective form of longevity training for women’ – and how to do it right

As you age, you might think low-impact exercise is the safest route for long-term health. But according to leading physiologist Dr Stacy Sims, this mindset could be holding women back. In fact, incorporating impact-based training – specifically, jump training – could be the key to building strength, resilience, and longevity well into later life.

‘If you’re looking at what you want to do when you’re 80 or 90, you want to be independently living, you want to have good proprioception, balance, you want to have good bones, and you want to be strong,’ says Dr Sims. ‘This is where you should look at ten minutes, three times a week of jump training. We have to turn our brains away from everything that’s been predicated before to this point.’

Her advice comes on neuroscientist Andrew Huberman’s podcast, Huberman Lab, in which he says: ‘One of the most common questions I get is what is the most efficient way for a woman older than 50 to train for the maximum healthspan and lifespan benefits.’

On Instagram, Dr Sims writes: ‘Jump training and plyometric exercises involve explosive movements, such as jumping, hopping, and bounding, that help to improve muscle power, speed, and agility. Women often look aghast when they see that I put plyometric training front and centre in my “Menopause for Athletes” programming. We’ve been taught that we should be taking it down a notch when we get older, not turning it up. But that is just not true. Women of all ages benefit from including plyometrics in their training.’

It makes sense that the older you get, the more apprehensive you feel about impact training like plyometrics (another name for jump training), but Dr Sims is adamant you’re missing out on some big benefits. Here’s how to do it.

Dr Sims explains: ‘[Jump training] isn’t your landing softly on your knees, this is like impact in the skeletal system. A colleague and a friend of mine Tracy Kissel did a PHD and post research on this, and is developing an app on it to show women how to jump to improve bone mineral density. Over the course of four months of this, women have gone from being osteopenic to normal bone density, so it’s a different type of stress. It’s ideal if your concern is decreasing bone density – which a lot of women do have as a concern because they lose about one third of their bone mass at the onset of menopause.

‘If you don’t do something as an intervention – so we see a lot of women are like, “Oh I’m going to go on menopause hormone therapy to stop bone loss.” Yeah, this can be a treatment, but I always look at an external stress that we can put on the body that is going to invoke change without pharmaceuticals – so, jump training.

‘And just to drive home that point about all ages: a systematic research review of the recent literature on plyometrics and older adults aged 58 to 79 reported that plyometrics often improved muscular strength, bone health, body composition, posture, and physical performance. None of the studies reported increased injuries or other adverse events from plyometric exercises among participants. The researchers concluded, “Plyometric training is a feasible and safe training option with potential for improving various performance, functional, and health-related outcomes in older persons.”‘

‘Plyometric exercises involve explosive, high-intensity movements, so it’s important to do them correctly to do them safely.

‘Let me also be clear that, unless you’ve already been engaged in some form of plyometric training, I’m not going to recommend that you start doing lots of bounding or jumping right out of the gate. You need to build up to it and establish good form. And always warm up beforehand so your muscles and connective tissues are ready to go.

‘To get the form down and condition your connective tissues to start jumping, you can start by simply bouncing up onto your toes and dropping into a squat. Start by standing with your legs hip to shoulder-width apart, feet flat on the floor. Bend your knees slightly and immediately straighten them again, bouncing up onto your tiptoes. Pause, then lower back down, dropping into a full squat, making sure that your knees track over your feet and don’t cave in. That will be your landing position when you start jumping.

Bounding is an effective form of jump training

‘Once you’re comfortable there you can do a depth drop, or reverse plyo drop. This is where, instead of jumping up onto a box or step, you start on a raised platform and step off to land on the ground. To do it, start on a step or box about 12 inches off the floor. Step off and land softly, immediately dropping into a squat position, again, keeping your knees straight ahead and not caving in toward each other. You can do 3 to 4 sets of 4 to 6 drops.

‘As you get comfortable absorbing the force of landing, you can start on the floor and do squat jumps. Stand with your feet wider than shoulder-width, feet turned out a little. Extend your arms straight in front of you. Squat down until your butt drops below knee level. Quickly extend your legs and jump into the air. Land softly, immediately dropping into another squat. Repeat 3 to 4 sets of 4 to 6 jumps, working your way up to one to two sets of 8 to 10 jumps. (Burpees are also a good way to sneak in squat jumps!)’

Once you’ve built up a solid and safe foundation, Dr Sims advises including the following exercises:

• Squat jumps
• Jump lunges
• Burpees
• Box jumps
• Tuck jumps
• Broad jumps
• Plyo push-ups

‘Jump training, heavy resistance training and sprint interval training are the three key things from a training standpoint,’ Dr Sims says.

Heavy resistance training

Heavy weight lifting should be reserved for compound lifts (using multiple muscle groups at once) to avoid injury, says Dr Sims

On Instagram, Dr Sims explains how to do heavy resistance training:

• How many reps to go for: ‘Heavy lifting is defined as lifting 6 reps or less with as much weight as possible. It’s obviously not something that you jump straight into without building up to it, especially if you’re new to resistance training.
• Best exercises to lift heavy: ‘A little goes a long way! You should not be lifting heavy for every single exercise. Instead, you want to reserve lifting heavy sh*t (LHS) for big, compound lifts like squats, deadlifts, and chest presses, which spread the load across multiple large muscles. That way you’re not overstressing any single muscle or joint.
• Safety tips: ‘Safety is paramount here. Make sure you get expert instruction on load and technique. If you are new to lifting, book a few sessions with a trainer to learn proper technique and nail that down before adding weight.
• How to progress with reps and sets: ‘LHS will not happen overnight. It can take months to build up to heavy loads if you are new. Expect to start with more moderate loads, lifting 2-3 sets of 8-15 reps to build a foundation and muscular endurance.
• When to increase the weight you’re lifting: ‘After four to six weeks, you can bring the weight up and the repetitions down, so you’re lifting 5 sets of 5 reps. When that becomes comfortable, you can aim for 4 to 6 sets of 3-5 reps.’

Sprint interval training

Sprint interval training (SIT) can enhance the benefits of jump training by boosting your metabolism

• Benefits of sprint interval training: ‘For menopausal women, high-intensity sprint interval training sessions can provide the metabolic stimulus to trigger the performance-boosting body composition changes that our hormones helped us achieve in our premenopausal years. One of the biggest benefits of SIT training is improvement in body composition (and cardiovascular health). SIT training increases lean muscle mass and reduces fat mass in a relatively short period of time. In a 2019 study published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers had a group of postmenopausal women, ages 47 to 59, perform 20-minute bouts of SIT – alternating eight seconds of sprinting on a stationary bike at about 85% of their maximum heart rate with 12 seconds of easy pedaling – three times a week for eight weeks. By the study’s end, the women had lost fat, regained lean muscle mass, and improved their aerobic fitness by 12% after what amounted to only eight hours of exercise over eight weeks.
• Heart rate zone to aim for: ‘The key here is INTENSITY. In high-intensity interval training, alternating short bursts of hard exercise are followed by relatively short recovery periods. So, if you’re using heart rate as a guide, anything that sends your heart rate above about 85% of your maximum is high intensity. When you reach your menopausal years, it’s very important to incorporate the shortest, sharpest form of HIIT: sprint interval training.
• Duration of sprint intervals to aim for: ‘As the term indicates, SIT sessions include super-short, 10- to 30-second sprint-style efforts. They are extremely beneficial for both peri- and postmenopausal women.

‘From a nutrition standpoint, protein is so important. When you start telling women they need to look at around 1-1.1g per lb which is around 2-2.3g per kg per day, they’re like, “Whoa, that’s a lot of protein!” It is, because you haven’t been conditioned to eat it. It doesn’t all have to be animal products; you can also look at all the different beans.

‘In order to build the muscle and to keep the body composition in a state that we want it to keep going for longevity, those are the big rocks: sprint interval training, heavy resistance training, jump training and protein.’

As Women’s Health UK’s fitness director (and a qualified yoga teacher), Bridie Wilkins has been passionately reporting on exercise, health and nutrition since the start of her decade-long career in journalism. She secured her first role at Look Magazine, where her obsession with fitness began and she launched the magazine’s health and fitness column, Look Fit, before going on to become Health and Fitness writer at HELLO!. Since, she has written for Stylist, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Elle, The Metro, Runner’s World and Red.

Now, she oversees all fitness content across womenshealthmag.com.uk and the print magazine, spearheading leading cross-platform franchises, such as ‘Fit At Any Age’, where we showcase the women proving that age is no barrier to exercise. She has also represented the brand on BBC Radio London, plus various podcasts and Substacks – all with the aim to encourage more women to exercise and show them how.

Outside of work, find her trying the latest Pilates studio, testing her VO2 max for fun (TY, Oura), or posting workouts on Instagram.