My assumption — he has lost the basic skills. Pushing him hard will be ineffective.

温和地坚持

On the other hand, he probably needs more perseverance. He has a tendency to give up and puts in fake effort.

Note Take-up-for-fun involves (confrontational?) facetime and can create pain (frustration/regret/losing-cool) in me, despite the ‘for-fun’ slogan.

Biggest problem — insufficient intrinsic motivation