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Report nowMental strength is the magic word for top athletes. Is it also useful for amateur players? For several months now, blue News editor Bruno Bötschi has almost always lost at badminton. Now he has asked for help.
Roger Federer fended off no fewer than seven match points in the quarter-final against Tennys Sandgren at the Australian Open 2020. In the end, the Swiss won the match against the American 6:3, 2:6, 2:6, 7:6, 6:3.
Experts claimed afterwards that Federer had won the match mainly thanks to his mental strength.
But how does a person train his mental strength?
Don't worry, I'm not going to compare myself to the tennis god Federer. I'm a bad amateur badminton player who doesn't have his nerves under control too often and makes far too many mistakes in his approach shots.
You could also say: I give the points to my training partner and best friend Christoph Ilg, with whom I've been playing badminton every Monday for over 20 years.
That's why I've now sought help from Jan Rauch.
First of all, I wanted to find out from the experienced sports psychologist from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) what mental strength actually is and whether I can train it as an amateur athlete? And if so, how exactly does that work?
Or have I long since lost the plot? In other words: I will continue to lose most of the time when I play badminton in the Yonex hall on Geroldstrasse in Zurich on Monday.
In the video, Jan Rauch also explains to me why winning the match against Christoph Ilg should not be my first goal.
Momoll, this realization seems to be the key to winning regularly. Sounds totally simple - doesn't it?
