When he gets some glutes? Wasn't he saying that he's hip thrusting 200+ for reps? Doesn't sound like lack of glute development to me.
The problem with using an exercise to gauge power. He can't jump more than 30'' and he is incredibly slow. Watch his dunk videos and you see a guy who has undeveloped glutes that don't fire. Hip thrusts are a good glute activator but they use a small range of motion and the load doesn't necessarily equate to power very well. I can get a good workout hip thrusting 225lbs or 505lbs - I have never "maxed" my hip thrust and don't need to. One of the biggest evaluation mistakes you can make (and usually it's self evaluation where we make it) is when we assume that an athlete can do "X" so therefore that part of the body is clearly not the problem. It usually comes from an athlete doing an isolation exercise of limited range of motion and assuming that means that muscle is not an issue. Classic example is a slow sprinter with weak hamstrings who can do something silly like a "Natural GHR" assuming that "I don't have weak hamstrings so that can't be the issue" but not realizing that using your hamstrings as a knee flexor with your knees on the floor doesn't have much to do with hamstring power or development in hip extension during a sprint. Watch an athlete move dynamically an locate where he has weakness rather than referring to a gym lift as evidence of anything.
I agree with that. But you can't say he "has no glutes". You can say he isn't using the glutes that he already has at a pretty good level in terms of strength (yes, isolated movement strength, gym work strength, whatever) well in dynamic movements. That I can agree with. On the other hand, he doesn't seem too fast in ANY movement so I'm not sure it's the glutes' fault - it's either his desire to be fast (he is just "sleepy", "lazy" when he plays or whatever), or his CNS is slow.
We can test that if he agrees to film some "glute unrelated movements" dynamically (can't come up with an idea now) or that keyboard type test (where you press the spacebar as fast as you can for 10 seconds and see what kind of numbers you come with to test "quickness" or CNS speed). I know, silly tests, but they might provide some information (relevant or not).
Back to the glutes idea, I would do dynamic glute movements if I were maxent - KB swings (a ton of them, focusing on the "hip snap"), med ball tosses (focusing on the hip snap), double leg bounds, depth jumps for length etc. I know a lot of these things have a horizontal component in them in terms of hip action - if anybody has any idea about a vertical hip dynamic movement... I'm all ears. Maybe SVJs to rim with little knee travel and a lot of hip bend/hinge (like what Toddday was trying to do in his depth jumps videos).
Plus sprints. If I were as slow as maxent, I would say "fuck this, I will do sprints like crazy" and try different distances and give 110% effort on them. Not only are they great plyometric exercises but also train the hip hyperextension, the posterior chain dynamically, the calves dynamically, stiffen the Achilles etc, all the good stuff.
Obviously, all these besides playing actual aggressive ball (especially on defense, since you don't have the ball and can move freely, you can be quicker/faster defensively and you'll benefit from that type of multi-directional "plyo work").
These are what I feel are the most sensible things for maxent at this moment.
I agree with 99% of what you said. I just don't find hip thrusts to actually be the best test of glute strength even in isolation. I believe this just from empirical evidence and the only argument I can make probably isn't that satisfying - it's just that I have seen tons of athletes who are really weak somehow able to do a lot of hip thrusts with moderate weight. The same isn't true for other compound exercises - eg if you can wide-grip bench a lot of weight your delts and chest must be strong - doesn't mean you necessarily are recruiting them dynamically -but they are developed. Maybe it's because we can make the hip thrust really hard or really easy by where we place our feet, by how high we put out shoulders on the bench, by whether or not we truly squeeze at the top of the lift. Point I'm making is it's really easy to cheat our way to big hip thrust numbers...
However, like you said it doesn't matter if he has some strength reserve in his glutes if he doesn't recruit his hips dynamically it won't help and you gave great suggestions for exercises that will force him too...
That said, to answer his question about how he knows if he has weak glutes or hamstring or quads I would tell you why this is my hunch.
1) The eye test. He hasn't posted a lot of video or pics but from what I see is an athlete with no hip pop who doesn't look like he has much glute development (simply put - small butt, no natural anterior tilt, doesn't look like a sprinter or glute dominant athlete). Of course looks are not everything.
2) The strong and weak points. While not spectacular his standing vertical is one of his more impressive feats. In fact his standing vertical dunk is almost as high as his running vertical. His vertical jumping ability is "better" than his speed. In this I mean most people who can jump as high as him are probably faster and in fact most people who can jump within a few inches of him are probably faster. Hamstring dominant athletes will usually be at one end of the spectrum (really fast but surprisingly bad at jumping) and glute dominant people in the middle with more speed than jumping ability but not extreme while quad-dominant athletes will be decent at jumping besides being terrible athletes dynamically.
3) His long history of being a sedentary fat male. Men who are active and playing sports their whole life figure out how to use glutes as a kid and stick with it. Men who spend a decade sitting at a desk and then try to play sports usually have inactive weight glutes and hips.
4) His ability to "feel" exercises. He hates med ball tosses because they only hurt his back which IMO is evidence that he doesn't use his glutes at all. Of course your right that he might have strong glutes and just not know how to use them. But I'm less convinced this is the problem - as Charlie Francis said - looks right flys right. Sure there are exceptions but usually if you have strong glutes throughout the range of motion and train a dynamic skill you will learn how to use them... Not always though...
My suggestions are similar to yours - bounding, broad jumps, etc (especially tailored to bball at the end), sprints, etc. If his broad jump is terrible it's more evidence of a glutes issue. Basically the video I posted is a incomplete summary of how he should be training. Things like your speed at defensive shuffle is going to be quite glute dominant...
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