Everybody has bad days in training, but Tom Dean has opened up about how one of his worst sessions left him storming from pool deck in disgust. Speaking on his podcast The Weekly Freestyle, Dean explained how a tough session at the Bath NTC took him beyond his limits and led to an early departure.

After a busy weekend that had seen Dean claiming two gongs at the British Swimming Awards and fulfilling Team GB commitments, a tough morning session and time in the weights room, Dean said he was not feeling up for it: “I’d written the session off before I got there, which is poor.”  

But with the Bath squad currently hosting Japanese freestyler Katsuhiro Matsumoto, the 2019 world silver medallist over 200m, the challenge of going head-to-head with their guest was laid down by coach Dave McNulty.

The session itself was a threshold effect session, with multiple repeats pushing the swimmers to their VO2 max. The set consisted of 5 sets each of gradually increasing intensity leading to a growing number of all out 100m efforts, according to Dean the most VO2 work the group had ever done in a single set.

The set:

1. 200m (aerobic) – 2 x 100m (threshold) 1 x 100 max
2. 200m – 2x 100m – 2 x 100 max
3. 200m – 2x 100m – 3 x 100 max
4. 200m – 2x 100m – 4 x 100 max
5. 200m – 2x 100m – 5 x 100 max

The first two rounds successfully negotiated, with 100m splits around the 55 second mark, he then started to suffer, dropping to 58 seconds on the third round, while Matsumoto was holding 55s repeats. Having completed the 4^th round with a set of times that Dean called “embarrassing”, McNulty hauled him from the water, stopping him from completing the 5^th set and sending him to swim down.

“I was upset and embarrassed I couldn’t put a good session together for this guy who has come all the way from Japan to train with us” he said, with his kit bag sent flying as the frustration mounted. “I hate getting stopped early in sessions – I’m always the one who stays in.” McNulty called the behaviour out, but Dean was gone.

The air was cleared the following morning, with the coach calling it the lowest he’d ever seen Dean in training, and an international incident was avoided with a text exchange, Matsumoto graciously replying:

“You don’t have to apologise, everybody has ups and down, let’s do our best together”

It’s not the first run in between coach and swimmer, with Dean revealing on a previous episode that McNulty had not wanted him to travel to the World Short Course championships in December, seeing it as a distraction from longer term aims. The swimmer prevailed on this occasion, with Dean, named as part of an 11 strong GB team, wanting to take the opportunity when it was available, anticipating that he may be on an extended break after the Paris Olympics when the next edition rolls round in 2024.

You can follow Tom and co-host Alex Sutton on the Weekly Freestyle podcast Instagram to find out about more episodes or listen on Spotify