We have all heard of physical harm that can hinder players, but there is another aspect that has been overlooked, that is mental health. Fred recently participated in a trauma event, which had a deeper impact on him than I expected, and in turn had a serious impact on his game. Let’s discuss it.

This is indeed a serious problem, writes Viktor Axelsen’s challenge to Beijing Zhang on mental health for a long time ago. It will be mentally exhausted when competing in tough conditions for a long time. In each game, there is only 1 winner and all other players must lose. It is dealing with loss of mental loss. What problems are there, where improvements can be made, there are gaps in preparation work, whether there are tactical errors, and gaps in skills, etc. All of this has caused huge psychological losses to the players.

For a teenager like Fred, even some life events can be traumatic. Fred had a traumatic experience at school activities, which lingers in his mind for a while. It got so bad that he couldn’t focus on his latest tournament and lost the defeat.

As an experienced IT professional, I can recognize the symptoms. This requires quick action to help Fred shut down the incident so he can keep moving forward. I had to talk to him for a long time to let him know that the incident was not his fault and that accidents sometimes occurred. I had to help him stand out from his head so he could close and keep moving forward. I even wrote to the teacher explaining what actually happened. Thankfully, the teachers were very supportive and consulted with Fred to help him calm down.

We have to help Fred recover quickly from his traumatic experience as another match took place a few weeks later. This is the challenge for professional athletes: time. The lifespan of an athlete is very short, only about ten years. I’ve been working for 25 years in my career and I do hope to last for 15 years. That’s four times the career of a professional athlete. During a 40-year career, I took a year off, but athletes couldn’t afford it.

Therefore, athletes need to recover quickly, and in order to do this, the diagnosis must be fast. If we don’t recognize Fred’s trauma, he may have been in depression for a year or more. That would ruin his career.

Although mental health has no physical symptoms, the risks are real. We must not brush it off, nor can we discount its effect.

As part of Fred’s recovery process, I decided to compete in a parent-child doubles game in a few weeks. Hopefully Fred will find the joy of badminton again sooner rather than later!

That’s it.

Until the next update, Eat well, get a lot of rest, and then keep badminton!