The intensity of Watford's home training sessions has been increased as the players work to remain fit while the coronavirus pandemic keeps them away from the training ground.

The squad had been working on a basic home training schedule over the past week but that has since been intensified by fitness coach Victor Cervera, who said the team were now working on areas of fitness they might not be able to ordinarily.

In an interview with the club website, Cervera said: “The programme has changed a bit.

"They have a couple of sessions during the day: a muscular part in terms of strength and another one for cardiovascular fitness. That CV session is done on a bike, on a treadmill or some have been doing it in the park if they haven't got the facilities at home. We want to modulate the week and touch all parts of the physiological core. They are focussing on the basics, building the aerobic capacity, building the capacity to work in volume and then working on specific zones. It is a good moment to build parts of the fitness that you wouldn't work on during the season.”

In order to observe the players' efforts, monitoring equipment has been sent to all the players to provide the club with data from each session.

This allows Cervera and his team to keep an eye on the players' progress.

“We want to be controlling exactly what they are doing,” he said.

“We have sent heart-rate bands to their houses and we'll use the date for our internal log. When they work out, they have to wear the heart-rate band and then we can ensure they are working properly and they upload the session to the App. We can check the timings are correct, minutes they have passed in every zone, their average power, calculate the calories they are burning and also record the perception of how hard they think they are working from a scale of one to ten. We know exactly what they are doing and I'm in contact with them daily so I can understand any difficulties they have. I stay on them every day.”