Theres 24 hours in a day, you can only train so many of them until you burn out, we have no idea if that cut into practice time at all, he could have very well had them train just as much or more than normal following that. There are only three places the fighters are allowed to be, the gym, the dr, and the house. I highly, highly doubt that Hughes, who's team said it seemed like the coaches were trying to break them practices were so hard, shorted his fighters on any training. He probably just gave them an extra hour out of the house to read, something they cannot do in the house, and something they would not have been able to do if it was another book.
Yes, it can be inspirational, I'm not denying that. On your OWN time. This is not something that should be assigned. This is something that should be advised for free time reading. Lance Armostrong's War can be VERY inspirational book. If you're a coach you shouldn't assign that book when ur fighter has a week before your fight. Books that change your view on great scale are not meant to be read in a day. They must be digested. When you're trying to train 200% 3 times a day, the book is not what you're going to be worried about. I'll agree with you about pep-talks though, i find it not work on many people. Some personalities are just in a different mind set to get motivated by pep-talks. Especially when the speaker is not well versed. Pep-talks never got me fired up. Looking at my teammates and my coach before I go out did a much better job.
Eh, assigned reading has its place too...especially if you have some downtime as most athletes do. I'd actually think that a combination of inspiring reading, tough training, a few pep-talks, and some relaxation/breathing exercises would be ideal to create fighting spirit. Immerse the guy in training and inspiration. Personally, I'd try psyching my fighters up with a few stories from Norse mythology. Assigned reading or not, anybody who didn't get pumped up from that must be comatose.
Would you honestly say that if you trained 3 times a day at full capacity you would be reading a book in between? Dunno, for me something that supposed to inspirational will take concentration. After training I'd just wanna chill, watch a movie or do something that just relaxes your mind.
It's helped me in the past in a variety of tough situations (reading in general, not just the Bible). Perhaps it's just a matter of different tastes. And of course, movies would be another aspect of the psychological training. Something either with a warrior ethos or some sort of deeper meaning would do nicely.
Something like breathing/relaxation exercises i can understand. That would relieve the stress and help with overall mentality. Maybe it's just not for me reading in between hard training. From the responses from fighters, I don't think it was for them either. Morning training, relaxing, then reading in the evening with a cup of tea or something is more like it. But when you're training 3 times a day giving everything its a little stressing to read afterwards IMHO.
Perhaps the point is that Matt misread his audience. It probably would have worked if he was dealing with men closer to himself in temperament.
I'll go with it being personality based. I'll also agree with you on Matt's misreading his team. There was couple of people who were geniually interested but many of them were laughing it off.
You can't watch a movie, you can't have any reading material, you can't watch tv, you can't have access to any media of any kind. Hughes got special permission for them to read something, If I had no form of media whatsoever, I would read whatever anybody put in front of me.
