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The Basketball Podcast: EP 388 with Mark Upton on Better Coaching and Skill Development
In this week’s basketball coaching conversation, ShootXP founder and skill acquisition expert Mark Upton joins the Basketball Podcast to share insights on better coaching and skill development.
Mark Upton is a globally respected coaching and skill acquisition expert with over two decades of experience shaping youth sport and learning design. His career began in Australia, sparked by a childhood passion for basketball and a deep curiosity about how people learn. That early interest evolved into a professional journey spanning sport science, coaching, performance analysis, and applied research.
Throughout the 2000s, Mark worked with professional teams, national sporting organizations, and institutes of sport, helping coaches build game-like learning environments and understand athlete development through performance systems and skill acquisition science. His early writing and speaking engagements positioned him as a thoughtful contributor to the emerging online dialogue around coaching and learning.
In the 2010s, Mark’s influence grew through thought leadership and blogging, where he challenged traditional coaching methods and advocated for nonlinear pedagogy, deliberate play, and practices that foster decision-making and adaptability. His work encouraged coaches to move beyond isolated drills and embrace complexity in training design.
By the late 2010s, Mark embraced a neo-generalist philosophy, expanding his focus beyond sport to include systems thinking, organizational development, and human learning. His writing at markupton.life reflects this broader perspective, offering insights that bridge disciplines and help people navigate complexity in learning environments.
In the 2020s, Mark founded ShootXP, a basketball development platform that integrates skill acquisition science, technology, and analytics to support youth players, coaches, and families. ShootXP emphasizes long-term growth over short-term success, helping users understand that real development comes through challenge, struggle, and meaningful engagement—not trophies or shortcuts.
Today, Mark continues to influence the global coaching community through ShootXP, his writing, and consulting. His work consistently promotes optimal challenge, exposure to higher levels of play, and the value of creativity and adaptability in sport. He remains a leading voice in rethinking how athletes learn and how coaches can design environments that truly foster development.
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Mark Upton Quotes:
“It was the car rides home with my son and maybe his mate after the soccer game, when they’re 9, 10 years old and you’re just listening in and really hearing their perspective of what the experience is and what they enjoy . . it was those car rides home and more as a parent that gave me a much better perspective on coaching as well.”
“That was an important shift for me, just having that bigger picture about coaching people and what we’re talking about here, particularly young people, just the care that you need and the upskilling in knowledge of how do we create the best environment possible for young people?”
“The argument is, we need to prepare kids for . . a tough world out there and they need to learn how to survive or cope in these environments. At some point in time, that idea of being a bit more challenged or not totally comfortable . . there’s going to be a time and place for that. But I think particularly with younger kids . . some of the research that is done [shows] that supportive environments that are caring, have strong positive relationships between adults and children . . that sets a pretty solid foundation for progressing into some of those more challenging situations that sports can create later on.”
“When starting out on your coaching journey, a lot of it is a bit of copy and paste and maybe that’s okay. But at some point, if you want to be a really good coach and create the best environment . . within a team or group context, individualize it as best as possible, particularly when it’s longer term player development . . How do we individualize it to their needs and design practice sessions around that?”
“Advocate a more constraints approach with small-sided games . . how do we get that sort of session in our weekly schedule and when can we get it in? . . So, we’ve got four or five players here. What are their needs? How do we manipulate the constraints or design the game to get what we want or they need? And then how are they progressing? How are we going to track it? All those sorts of common-sense questions that don’t have to be particularly sophisticated but it’s finding the time to do it consistently.”
“Ultimately, we want things we do outside of the game or the match context to maximally transfer to in-game performance. The transfer idea is key . . Why do or don’t things that you do transfer? . . At the start, we probably broke the game down just too much . . the starts are too static and predictable and from the same spot every time. And the ball comes in the same way.”
“There’s the whole-part-whole method . . the whole doesn’t have to be in basketball terms 5v5, does it? If it’s work with 8, 9, 10-year olds, I would say 3v3 would be a great way to start with a whole and let’s see how that game unfolds. And then, maybe you’re getting into the part and reducing it down . . to individual shooting or dribbling . . and then you’re back into a 3v3 game.”
“You still never feel like you’ve solved it or that, ‘Okay, just do this and in six months we’re going to get this result.’ So, that uncertainty as a coach or as a parent, you need to be adaptable and kind of comfortable with some of that uncertainty. I think that is also a big challenge.”
“Rick Shuttleworth talks about ‘the learning pit.’ You get to this point in your journey where you want to get up here, but to get there you’ve got to go down into like this learning pit where it’s messy and uncomfortable and you’re probably questioning. ‘Am I good enough?’ But you struggle through that and then you take that jump up. I think there’s a period where sometimes young players don’t necessarily want to be challenged . . because they’re trying to show that they’re good, they don’t want their weaknesses exposed . . But once a player kind of gets to that point of, ‘Yeah, I’m half decent now. How can I get even better?’ That’s then when they can really step up. I’ve seen that with young professional players coming into the professional game as well.”
“What is skill really? It’s being able to solve problems that the real game is going to throw at you.”
“I think we need more coaches who have a really solid, like a 7 out of 10, understanding of this [skill acquisition]. We’ll still always need a skill acquisition specialist who’s got a 9 or 10 out of 10 understanding of the area. But I think we need to find and support those coaches who want to explore the area.”
“What do players think about the session? Would they keep coming back . . if they were going to experience that for the whole year? Would they want to come back? Would they be enthusiastic about it? . . I’ve seen it quite a bit . . with former players who transition into assistant coaching roles to start their coaching career and within six months they’ll be doing something that we’ll chat about and they’ll go, ‘Yeah, as a player, I hated when coaches did that.’ Now you’re doing it.”
“in the end, it’s not really about basketball. That’s kind of what we do and rock up for every day. But, actually, it’s not about that. I think the great coaches all bring some other perspective to it or different experiences and make it broader.”
Mark Upton Breakdown:
Mark Upton Selected Links from the Podcast:
Mark Upton
Mark O’Sullivan
Rick Shuttleworth
Adam Gorman
Gregg Popovich
Steve Kerr
Phil Jackson
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