Brentford's 1km pre-season fitness drill is the most brutal in Premier League

Pre-season training is often a time for managers to absolute beast their players and that is exactly what is happening with Thomas Frank and Brentford.

The Bees secured an impressive ninth place finish in the Premier League, accruing 59 points and beating the likes of Manchester City, Manchester United and Liverpool in a memorable campaign.

But the west London outfit are back at Jersey Road for pre-season and have been put through their paces.

Every year under Frank, Brentford's players participate in a 1km (1000 metres) test. It's described as "one of the most feared days of pre-season and it's easy to see why.

Headed up by fitness coaches, Brentford players are required to run 10 lengths of a football pitch as fast as they can.

It's a maximal aerobic speed test, with 10% to 15% of a Premier League player's total distance done at high speed. According to Stat Sports, anything under three minutes for the run is a seriously impressive time - even for elite athletes playing at the top level.

Brentford posted images and videos of the squad doing the dreaded drill, aptly captioning one clip, "Watching the 1k test is a lot better than doing the 1k test".

In another picture shared online, the players looked absolutely out on their feet, with many lay on the floor after putting everything into the test.

Brentford have yet to confirm who won the test but in 2021 Mads Bidstrup achieved a superb time of 2 minutes and 59 seconds.

Explaining why they go through the gruelling exercise, athletic performance coach Matt Bramall told the club's website: "1k, we do as a measure of aerobic fitness of players. Obviously they've all come back in from the off-season, they've been working hard.

"Basically, [it's] ten lengths of the pitch, 100 metres of length. We're looking for a decent time. Under 3 minutes 15 is a good time but we've got a few lads who will probably go under that."