Inside Hearts pre-season: Friendlies, team bonding, new signings

During that time the team will be tested, mentally and physically. There will be friendlies and a trip to Tenerife. And there will be team bonding to bring an already close-knit squad even closer together.

Hearts Standard spoke to Steven Naismith to get an idea of what's in store for him and his players over the next five weeks or so...

Testing

Across the first couple of days, Hearts players will undergo a plethora of tests. Essentially an "elite health check" as Naismith put it, including heart screenings and blood work. There will also be the usual muscle tests looking at individuals' strength across their body such as hamstring, calf and groin strength with others allowing the club's medical and sports science team to get a general baseline for the fitness of each player.

"We collect a lot of data on the players which is important because we can highlight areas of improvement and areas where players haven’t improved and where there needs to be improvement and a will from them to make that improvement," Naismith explained. "We’re quite robust with that and it’s really important because it is clear, every few months you can have a look at this and we can see [to compare].

READ MORE: How Hearts stars prepare for pre-season: Private training to McKay influence

"We upgraded the chefs in the bistro last season and the progression from a year ago to now in terms of the body composition and the muscle gain, especially with the younger players in the squad has been extremely impressive. And that’s a key indicator to show the investment is working. What we’re doing is getting guys who are much more robust and strength is at a much greater level than it has been in the past."

For Naismith and his coaching staff, it means a behind-the-scenes role in those initial days with the club's sports science team and head of performance Bob McCunn taking the lead.

Conditioning

Once the test days are complete, it is loads of running, right? Not a ball in sight? Not quite. As Hearts Standard detailed yesterday, players are now coming back in a condition that doesn't require gruelling conditioning sessions to get individuals fit and to help them lose weight.

Players are much more aware and understanding of living the life of a professional athlete, even in the off-season. What they eat, how they maintain fitness and build towards pre-season which can mean work with private coaches. It aids Naismith, allowing him and his coaching staff to move much quicker toward the elements that will play a key role next season.

"The game has moved that way," he said. "It is as much a lifestyle as it is a job and a profession. I think nowadays athletes and younger people in general have got a much better understanding of diet. Having a few extra meals they wouldn’t have during the season or a few drinks that aren’t going to affect them too much in those first two weeks.

"Naturally, players will start ticking over off their own back. The industry is that competitive, everybody is trying to get an edge over each individual. As a manager and a coach it makes things much easier because you know gone are the days of guys coming back a stone overweight. That makes the start of pre-season much easier.

"We’ll start off much more with a normal style of training. It might be a bit longer and loads of touches with the ball but it is more about getting a familiarity of the ball and your touch. It’s about getting their body, their feet, their joints, their muscles used to getting back doing day-to-day training."

The Hearts head coach stressed that like so much of what the team do, it is a collective effort with a lot of input into the planning of pre-season. But he will feed in some running but more as a mental rather than physical test.

"This is a collective, a group thing," Naismith said. "It’s not so much me going in and saying, ‘I love doing this’. Bob McCunn, the coaches, the sports science [team], physios, we’ll sit as a group and work out the main plan of what we want.

"Throughout pre-season, I’ve got a certain amount of if you want to call it old-style run type sessions that are more about the mental and the teamwork aspect that I’ll drop in that are solely the small parts that I think are beneficial.

"The rest of it, whether it be a conditioning element will all, as much as possible, have the ball and be game related. That’s our job as coaches, to be creative enough to get to that point rather than be, ‘Nope, balls away, they are not coming out today’. You've got to be creative and make it as enjoyable [as possible] and if we can tie in what we’re about and what we want to do then the boys are learning that as much as the fitness element of it."

READ MORE: Why Hearts Oriam upgrades are so important: Player recruitment, pitches, future

Tenerife camp

Early on in pre-season Hearts will travel to Tenerife for a warm-weather training camp. With temperatures in the mid-to-high 20s it will be testing conditions for the players to be put through their paces as the team build towards playing friendlies.

But for Naismith, there is a more important aspect of the camp. Team bonding, players getting to know each other and the tests the players are given in that environment when they are around each other all day.

The Hearts head coach credits last summer's camp as being crucial to building a strong team spirit and togetherness. That can be seen in Alan Forrest and Frankie Kent going to Germany to support Lawrence Shankland and Zander Clark in the Euros, players going on holiday with each other and their partners. Team-mates golfing together or going out for coffee regularly.

"In terms of the training side of it, the heat is an important part because it is pushing the players," Naismith said of the Tenerife camp. "It’s asking them to dig deep in situations where it is easy to give up.

"Just as important for me is us being together 24/7. The last camp we went on was really good and it really brought a togetherness and I think that carried on all the way through the season. It was very clear to see that we didn’t just have a group of players who would come in, do their work and leave. They bonded and they became a real close-knit group and I put a lot of that down to our pre-season which was really good.

Pre-season is seen by Steven Naismith as a great time for team bonding (Image: SNS)

"Those days are seven in the morning to 10 at night. There’s team bonding going on, and communication programmes in place to test the players on their communication skills. All these things we put to the players in an enjoyable way they can buy into. At the end of every training, there’s a challenge for everybody, they are all in pairs so they’ll have their challenge as a pair.

"You need to find out everything you can on your partner and others as you can be tested at any moment. Whether it be a personal thing, to where they started their professional career, a football question. Everything is geared to this competition that will run throughout pre-season.

"We did it last season and it was really good, loads of funny moments but ultimately the players came away from pre-season having much more knowledge about each other than before. It all makes a big difference. If we are all pulling in the same direction, we’ve all got the feeling of not just being employees and work colleagues, there’s more to it and then we will be successful. So far it’s been good."

READ MORE: Hearts transfer state of play: More signings, player exit stance, squad size

Euro factor

When the team move onto the more normal training later this week after the tests, Naismith said the "detail will be focused on us" and geared toward the opening game of the league campaign at the start of August (Premiership fixtures to be released on Thursday) and the Europa League play-off toward the end of August.

That European involvement adds to the importance of the next five weeks. With at least eight games in continental competition, it limits the time on the training pitch during the season to work on specifics. 

"We need to make a call on what is going to be more valuable for us because as soon as we go into our European games the pitch time is going to be less as a whole group," Naismith said. "From my experience, that’s the tough part to get, the small details you are effectively working on in these periods rather than any big changes.

"It’s vitally important but everything we can get our hands on to make it seamless we’ve tried to do it, with signings, when we come back, where we have our games fitted in and ultimately that’s all we can do."

Building up and friendlies

So far Hearts have announced three friendlies, a trip to Fleetwood Town sandwiched between home matches with Leyton Orient and Tottenham Hotspur.

Naismith reckons the team will play between five and seven friendly fixtures in total but it will depend on how well the players have "been taking up the information". A decision will be made on what the coaching staff feels is more valuable, extra days on the training pitch or minutes in a game.

"We’ll have a game early on and we’ll build up the minutes for every player," Naismith explained. "The preparation going into these games isn’t your standard preparation. The players will be going in at a fatigued state. That’s not them going in risking injury but they are going in having done a bit more work than they normally would before going into a game.

Hearts played Leeds United last summer (Image: SNS)

"If I’m honest, I'm not caring about the score, I’m more caring about how we do things and the tempo we do things. How quickly players get into each position. That comes out pretty quickly. We’ve got a game early on for that and we’ll have a good period of a week where we won’t have a game and the days we work will be long days. That will get us a lot of the fundamental stuff that is standard.

"A lot of our players know it and understand it and it will be a refresher but the new players will get that which will then go into the later friendlies and pre-season where there is a better understanding of what we want to do."

New players assimilation

Naismith has spoken of the importance of bringing in players early. Not only does it allow them more time to settle and get to know their team-mates but it provides the coaching staff more time to communicate what is expected of them and help them understand those expectations and the intricacies of the playing style and principles of play.

That communication started well before today. "A lot of that work" happened during the signing process when the players met Naismith before agreeing to join Hearts. He laid out where he sees addition each fitting into the squad, the standards required and the expectations.

In those first couple of days with Naismith, Frankie McAvoy and Gordon Forrest not having a hands-on role it allows them to have conversations with the new arrivals.

"We can potentially have a few smaller meetings with individuals as much as I’ve done a lot of that with them in the process of signing them," he said.

"Anything we feel there is big value in we will do that early on because as soon as we get onto the grass everything we do is factored around everything we are about. The way we see the game, what we expect no matter whether it is a pass, in possession, tactical, it all has elements of what we want, the new players need to have a grasp of that very early on."

The big kick-off

Whoever Hearts begin their season against, there isn't the expectation that they will be slick and fully up to speed as Naismith explained.

"You are not expecting to go into the first game of the season and be perfect because I don’t think I’ve ever played in a team where that’s happened," he said.

But the work that will go into the next five and a bit weeks is geared toward getting them as close to perfect as possible and setting up for a season that will hopefully surpass the 50-game mark.