One of the key elements of a successful campaign will start with building the side’s fitness in order to maintain their playing style throughout the season, and the track days have become a customary feature for the young Bees in recent years with B Team Head of Athletic Performance James Purdue leading the session.

The players competed in small groups and began with long distances around the track before competing in 200 and 400 metre races.

James, who has been a part of the performance department at Brentford for more than 10 years now, says it’s an important part of the calendar as they prepare the players for pre-season.

“We’ve been doing this day every season for five or six years,” explained James. “The idea behind it is that it’s very good for building aerobic fitness in the early stages of pre-season. We start with longer durations and then work right down to more anaerobic work with sprints.

“The idea is to give the boys something different to being on the pitch. In terms of relevance to football there is a lot of high speed running as well as fitness-based work.”

Head of B Team Athletic Performance, James Purdue

The young Bees had around one month away from Jersey Road following the end of the 2021/22 season to recover from what was a brilliant and tough fixture schedule to continue their development. Those players who have returned for the new season put in some brilliant work during the summer and James praised the players for keeping themselves in good condition.

He continued: “There is always a bit of a spectrum when the boys return in pre-season but, on the whole, we’re really happy that they’ve come back to us in good condition. They’ve proved that they’ve done their work in pre-season from the testing that we’ve done. It’s now about building fitness with relevance to football and building up to the first game against Salisbury.”

Any B Team season, with matches against a range of sides will test the players physically throughout the coming months, and if they are to continue to push themselves then James believes they will set themselves up for a positive campaign.

“Players don’t want to be chasing the first few months of the season for their fitness,” explained James. “If you get pre-season wrong then it can become a really long season for the players. It’s important to have that really good five-week period and then we can focus on more of the games as we move into the main part of the season.”