5 Ways to 'Bucket' Athletes to Improve Off-Season Development At The College Level

If you've spent any time driving across the country (or just ever used Google Maps, ever), you know that there's more than one route to get to any destination.

Some routes require more time, distance, or tolls but there is always more than one way. 

The same goes for training our athletes.

Why We Should Bucket College Athletes

In the college training environment, the range of training needs is substantial. For a Division I hockey program, there might be multiple NHL Draft Picks, an age range of 5-6 years, some players that will never play and some players who have never stepped foot in a gym. 

While the range of variation in athletes at the collegiate level is much less than at the pro (age range 18-23 vs. 18-40), the need to “bucket” athletes to drive training adaptations is just as important.

If we place our athletes in a one size fits all box- let's say everyone is going to do a hypertrophy block, you might have 1/3 of your athletes who really benefit from this, 1/3 who somewhat benefit, and 1/3 who suffer. 

The age (Chronological or biological), muscle mass, training experience, and genetics all play a role. As you begin to assess your athletes, you will more than likely find that there is a separation of needs between your players.

You might have a group of athletes that would benefit from work capacity training and a different group that needs very high-quality speed and power training. With observations such as these, it can be very helpful for you as the coach to “bucket” your athletes.

Placing your athletes in buckets is the simple process of defining a range (age, strength, training age, etc.) and designing programming to fit those needs. 

Here are 5 ways you can create buckets to help separate your athletes and programs based on their needs. 

1) Chronological Age

At the simplest level, chronological age can be the easiest way to separate your athletes for training.

Again, at the college level, the age range is only about 5 years at most but if you lack the resources or opportunities to use any of the other systems below, separating your athletes by age could be a useful tool.

You can have your 18–20-year old's (depending on your team size) doing more work capacity while your 21–24-year-old could be on a higher neurological program. 

2) Training Age

Much like looking at chronological age, you can split your team up based on years training or years training in your program.

The downside of bucketing your athlete this way (and via chronological age) is that it provides very little context for what an athlete needs but if you are limited in your resources, breaking your team up this way can help to start specifying the training each group is doing. 

3) Force plate data

One of my mentors, Matt Price, used to tell me that “Awareness is curative”- meaning once you have awareness of something, you can fix it. If you have a tool that shows that an athlete's power output, max strength or speed is lacking, you can't unsee that information and you can program to create a beneficial adaptation for the athlete.  With this theme in mind, a set of force plates can be incredibly helpful.

Looking at a metric like a counter movement jump, we could start to look at the power output of two separate athletes or RFD or even jump height. As you collect data, you can start to identify trends and needs. You can then build your program based on this. 

4) Muscle Mass

Muscle mass can be another good way of bucketing a group of athletes especially if you have access to tools such as Dexa Scans (the gold standard of body composition testing).

Understanding where each of your athletes stands in terms of their muscle mass can be a helpful tool because you can see who might benefit from hypertrophy training and who might need to train further down the force-velocity spectrum or benefit from conditioning.

Having a body composition metric helps you talk to coaches as well because it limits the subjective discussions like “this athlete needs to be 5 lbs. bigger.” 

What you choose to set your ”standards” for something body composition can be based on what tools you have available, your experiences and how that metric might be used. 

5) Strength Baseline

This is an easy means to bucket athletes as you can use your main lifts as your means of testing.

For example, I use the primary power lifts (bench, squat, and deadlift-trap bar) as three of the majors I used most often. Using the player's estimated 1 RM and their body weight will provide you with a relative strength baseline.

If you have a group of players that are further towards the “strong enough” range, your programming can be more geared towards the speed and power end of the force-velocity curve. 

Benefits of creating “training buckets”

• Allows for more specific training adaptations to be reached by your players.
• Creates standards for you as a coach to audit your program. 
• Allows for more objective training conversations with coaches/ staff.

In the end, how you choose to bucket your athletes or even if you choose to do so, is based on the tools, space and help you have available. Every system that you use will hopefully provide context for the needs of each of your athletes.

It is work-intensive as you need to create systems to define where an athlete sits and what that means for training but once those systems are created, you are able to create programs to better serve the population of athletes you have. 

About Paul

Paul Valukas is the Strength and Conditioning coach of the University of Wisconsin Badgers, where he oversees both the men's and women's hockey programs.

Prior to Wisconsin, Paul served as the head strength & conditioning coach for the Ontario Reign, the American Hockey League affiliate of the Los Angeles Kings. You can find him on Twitter (@pvalukas9), Instagram (@pvalukas9), and LinkedIn.