David Moyes' infamous pre-season training runs were designed to test the mental strength of the Everton squad.
The former Blues' boss used to put his players through the punishing Horse Shoe exercise at Finch Farm as a tortuous part of the summer schedule.
Leon Osman endured the run several times during his Goodison career but says he came to realise the real reason Moyes used it as part of training regime.
Osman, speaking to the ECHO in a special Royal Blue podcast recorded in Nairobi, says the run was a way for the manager to assess the character of his squad.
“Getting to know David Moyes as well as I did, and having done that blinking run so many times, that run wasn't designed for fitness,” Osman said.
“That run was designed to be unattainable so he could see which players got themselves through it regardless. Which players kept going, which players were mentally tough, which players dropped out with a sore back or a touch of cramp. The real test was completing the run.”
Moyes earned a reputation as a taskmaster, particularly during pre-season, but Osman says his methods moved with the times during his 11 years at the club.
“Make no mistake, pre-season is the hardest part of the year,” he said.
“I started being around football properly when a pre-season was required because everyone took the end of the season off. That's how it was then. You downed tools and had six weeks of doing nothing and some players who didn't handle their weight well came back fat.
“But I saw the transition of that. I saw players go away and come back for the first day of pre-season relatively fit already. It would only take a week of doing bits and bobs to get themselves conditioned for a game.
“You are expected to come back conditioned so managers' can hit the ground running.”
“But Davie Moyes progressed as professionalism did. For the first four or five seasons under David Moyes we didn't see a ball for the first week. It was running. I remember going to Nigel Mansell's hotel down in Exeter and I don't think we took balls! We still played a game at the end of the week but none of us had seen a ball before it.”
Osman also discusses this week's trip to Africa, the 'eye-opening' visit to a Nairobi slum, Phil Jagielka, Marco Silva and much more.
