Just as national teammates Adam Peaty and Ross Murdoch are establishing Great Britain as a breaststroking powerhouse, Plymouth Leander swimmer Ben Proud is starting to turn heads in the sprint freestyling realm. Proud is currently tied as the 4th-fastest man in the world in the 50m freestyle event, placing him into the conversation for potential podium placement in Rio.
Having been in the sport seriously for just under 5 years, Proud didn’t wait long to make his international podium-topping debut for his country by winning gold in the 50m freestyle at the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Since then he has already broken the British National Record in the splash n’ dash event (21.73) and is within striking distance of the 100m record as well.
Just recently at the Edinburgh International Meet, Proud, who was born and raised in Malaysia, fired off a solid 48.52 in the 100m freestyle to clock a personal best and put him just .32 of a second away from the GBR National Record.
How did the man who couldn’t break a minute in the 100 freestyle less than 5 years ago now find himself ranked 12th in the world in the event? A series of ups and downs, coupled with physical and mental fortitude to see himself through it all, has carried the young stud to where he is today and has laid a seemingly impenetrable foundation for the young star’s future on the international swimming stage.
Retta: How did you originally get into swimming? How long have you been in the sport?
Proud: Being born and raised in Malaysia, living there the first 16-17 years of my life, it’s a tropical country so we spent a lot of time in the water. I was on a school team but never took it seriously. Another friend and I joined a team – it was just us two and our coach – but after one of the first practices the coach turned to my mom and said he could make me Malaysian National Champion within year. In 10 months, my 50m freestyle time went from 25.0 to 23.4 and that was the turning point; I knew I had to go all in or nothing with swimming. I told my mom this is the career path I wanted to follow.
Retta: Your first major international gold medal was the 50m freestyle at the 2014 Commonwealth Games (as well as 50m butterfly gold). Do you still draw motivation from that significant career moment?
Proud: Originally when I started swimming I was a 50 butterflier – that was my event. That was the event I enjoyed the most and it was really the reason I got into swimming. But, since it’s not an Olympic event, my focus switched to freestyle when I joined Plymouth. Earning gold in 2014 was a huge step in the right direction. 2014 was a very good year for me, I accomplished basically everything I wanted to achieve. But, at the same time, each season is a new, blank slate. Anything can change in the span of only 6 months so I try not to look too much to the past.
Retta: What’s the Plymouth environment like?
Proud: We have about 400-500 swimmers, so we’re a large club, but we’re still quite a close-knit community. I train in the elite group, which has 10-15 people, including [Lithuanian Olympic gold medalist] Ruta Meilutyte. We all train very well together, hang out on weekends…we have a very healthy competition. We all compete against each other, but there are never any hard feelings because we know we’re all aiming for something individual to us, our own goals.
Retta: Your performance at 2015’s World Championships, where you earned 8th in the 50 fly (23.39), 8th in the 50 free (22.04), 23rd in the 100 free (49.35), what was your own personal assessment?
Proud: 2015 wasn’t so great. I had a few injuries here and there and I kind of just got through the season. I didn’t end up where I had hoped. Right after the World Championships, I told myself, ‘It’s an Olympic year, I don’t want to have any regrets.’ So, in September I changed up my program a little bit, upped the ante in the gym and it’s all working surprisingly well for me. I’ve caught back up to where I want to be, so this year has already been a big leap forward.
Retta: What’s something specific in your program that you changed that has made an impact?
Proud: I went from 3 hours of gym a week last year to 10 hours a week this year. I kicked off this year with a 10-week ‘pre-season’, which involved 10 weight sessions and 9 swim sessions a week for each of those 10 weeks. Then, I dropped it down to 6 gym sessions a week more for maintenance. I think it’s the extra strength and extra muscle mass that helped me swim faster in-season. Everything is just clicking for me this year.
Retta: Is that what helped steer you toward the 21.73 National Record you clocked earlier this year, in-season, at the BUCS Championships?
Proud: Yes, that was an ‘expected‘ surprise. If I’m going to be achieving what I want to achieve this summer, then I need to be able to hit these times in-season. I’m happy to be swimming 21’s at this point in the season.
Retta: Will you be targeting both the 50m and 100m freestyle events at British Trials coming up in less than a month?
Proud: Yes, but the 100m freestyle will be my main event at Trials. I’ve always had the speed, but now I have the speed endurance for the 100, so I’m going to be aiming to lower my 48.52 as much as possible at Trials. With Peaty’s strong breaststroke, we’ve got a chance of putting up a really good medley relay, so I feel like I owe it to Great Britain to stand up and be a contender in the 100 so we can continue to have an all-around strong medley relay going forward.
Retta: Speaking of relays, how do you feel Great Britain’s winning the men’s 800m freestyle relay gold impacted the national team as a whole? Did excitement trickle down to the entire GBR swimming community when those guys were on top of the podium in Kazan?
Proud: Yes, the entire team came away from Kazan feeling absolutely amazing. It was one of GBR’s best performances ever. I personally didn’t know the potential we had in the 4×200 relay until I watched the final and we won; it’s showing that British swimming is headed in the right direction. And, we’ll step it up even more. We’re still a very young team with lots of 19, 20, 21-year-olds. This Olympics is going to be big one for us.
Retta: Are you keeping an eye on your worldwide competition headed into Trials and Rio, or are you head-down, focusing on your own program?
Proud: I do follow rankings, but everyone is different in terms of what they can swim in-season versus being tapered. Mid-season, I try to just follow my own program and keep to myself. No one really remembers the results you do mid-season or too much even apart from Olympics. So I don’t take too much pride swimming fast in the middle of the season. The Olympics are the only time and place where I need to be performing well, so I’m keeping my head level.
Retta: Plans after 2016 Rio Olympics?
Proud: I’ll keep swimming as long as I can. I think I’m entering my prime now.
I think results speak for themselves. He is doing excellent results which means he is training correctly.
I’m Ben’s gym coach. We utilise a system I call SuperMonkey Training. Some sessions are indeed heavy lifting x2 weekly. Other sessions are hill sprints, plyometrics upper and lower. Other sessions are purely floor work for functional integration like crawling, rolling TGU’s etc. Other sessions are hardcore trunk stability sessions, lots of Pilates and Calisthenics. Other sessions are shoulder stroke specific joint stability and control work, influenced heavily by Mike Reinold and Dale Buchbergers work in baseball. And other sessions are an hour or more of assisted release and stretching. Some sessions are short n fast, others are long n heavy.
Variety of stimulus is the key to continual gains.
I’m Ruta’s gym coach too, she does the… Read more »
GOOD FOR YOU COACH. Shame on the haters and shame on previous juicers for putting doubt in people’s minds. Stealing this “…results you didn’t get from the work you didn’t do” for my swimmers. Wish I had your dry land knowledge and that time for my athletes.
STEPZBB:
How can you determine that?
I know of quite a few swimmers that follow a routine like that, what they do is split it up so they might have 5 lifting days and then 5 dry land/core days. That’s 10 gym sessions but it doesn’t mean he has to be lifting in everyone.
Under water work, he could be doing 9 water sessions of 3-4K each session as he is a sprinter.
So I don’t think you can judge on the volume of sessions he does. He might just be doing more short, sharp stuff.
I think that’s the biggest misconception in swimming is that it helps to do a lot of sessions but you… Read more »
Whoa! Nine water sessions and ten gym sessions, good grief!
10 gym sessions is too much. 10 gym sessions + 9 water sessions is madness. So either he is on juice and can recover from the training and even put muscle (he is jacked) or he eats more than 10k cals a day. Probably the first option really. A normal person doing 10 gym sessions would automatically loose muscle just because it wouldn’t have time to grow. This is just common sense.
Moderators, are you really letting that specific statement that an athlete is “on juice” pass? I was warned for commenting that we should all be healthily cautious of sporting greatness on an article about an American distance freestyle superstar…