Hopeful Mark McGhee has expanded on his decision to turn off his own radiators to help Dundee's players battle to beat the drop.
However, the Dens Park boss has conceded there is no direct link to football and the relegation scrap.
The experienced boss raised eyebrows with his methods of psyching up the Dark Blues squad ahead of Saturday’s bottom-of-the-table clash with St Johnstone.
McGhee hoped to inspire his Dundee players by going on a diet and without heating this week in the build-up to the crucial Premiership showdown.
McGhee told Sky Sports : "I'm using that sort of sports psychology really, I'm trying to get the message across that unless you change something, nothing changes.
"In order to be successful, I think you have to make sacrifices. You have to do something about it.
"The boys have been fantastic, the quality of the training has been the best it's been since we've been here. They're really starting to take on Simon's ideas, my ideas behind that and I think they've got themselves ready for this game at exactly the right time.
"All I'm trying to do is give them ways of finding a little bit more in themselves, asking a little bit more of themselves and challenging themselves.
"I used two things that I plucked out of the air to try and demonstrate how you can do that and it's caught people's imagination and it's great because that's what I was trying to do."
McGhee was then pressed on what the link to football was for the changes, before cutting in: "There's no link. It was just as I say - 'what could I do?'
"Out of the blue, I just decided I wasn't going to use the heating and I said that and I've done that.
"There's a little diet that Lesley Strachan, Gordon's wife, gave to me some time ago and I've done it before and it works, I decided to show that discipline this week.
"What will happen with that, and I hope the players will understand, is that when I arrive at the game for Saturday having made these little sacrifices, I'll feel slightly more entitled to get a good result.
"I'll feel as if I've done something about it for myself and therefore a little bit more ready for it.
"It didn't want them (the players) to go on diets and not use their heating. I just wanted them to understand the psychology of that kind of sacrifice, of having to do something about it and hopefully it will work."
