Cerebral infarction, also known as ischemic stroke, is a cerebrovascular disease with high disability and fatality rate worldwide. Despite comprehensive rehabilitation therapy on neural function, considerable patients may still suffer from motor functional disabilities, which directly affect their quality of life, ability of daily life, as well as increase the economic burden of patients’ families and society. Therefore, promoting the recovery of motor function is particularly important in patients with cerebral infarction, and this requires more novel therapeutic options in clinical practice. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation is a painless and non-invasive therapy. Accumulating evidences suggest that repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation can effectively improve the motor function of hemiplegic limb after stroke, and thus improving the patients quality of life. At present, new progress has been made in the basic and clinical studies of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment. This review summarized these advances in this field in order to be beneficial to clinical work.