How I Swim Transcript
MADELYN: Hi, my name is Madelyn.

JOE: My name is Joe Volfman.

CALISTA: Hi, my name is Calista Susa.

ABBY: My name's Abby Gase.

MADELYN: And here are tips on how to start off the blocks and in the water with an athlete with a disability.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

MADELYN: My number one tip is definitely your strength comes from your legs if you are missing an arm. And for me, when you get onto the blocks do it carefully and safely. So you don't fall off. For me, I'm obviously off balance. When I do relay starts with a team, I don't swing my arms. I just kind of dive in so I don't throw myself more off balance.

When I'm doing backstroke instead of holding on to the right bar on the side, I actually hold to the left bar to balance myself and have a better start.

CALISTA: This is how I do butterfly. The way I do it is with my arms, sometimes they're not always fully strong enough to fully pull. So I always have to tell myself to fully, do the arms or otherwise, sometimes I don't feel strong enough to do it fully.

And the big thing too is with basically all my strokes is that I really have to tell myself to kick. So, as long as I keep my kick and my arms going then it goes really well. As long as I keep a good, frequent dolphin kick.

JOE: The way I turn in the water is by once reaching the wall I turn my body and push off the wall with my left side and swing my whole body around and then start swimming.

ABBY: My dives off the blocks, I don't stand on the block because I don't have that kind of balance. So, I sit on the block to dive in. That's one of the bigger things that I had to adapt.

Tips for Triathlon Swimming Transcript
VISUAL DESCRIPTION: The images fade up. The footage fast forwards as swimmers quickly dart through the water around a large indoor pool. Text fades in. Dare 2 Tri. Coach's Swim Tips.

NARRATOR: There are a lot of skills that you need to practice in order to be able to swim well in open water. The best way to swim straight is to be good at sighting. So, we have a little drill that we do that we like to call "Alligator Eyes" where we swim with just our goggles out of the water. Your mouth is still in the water, breathing as normal and you just alligator eyes out of the water, getting used to your legs- how they balance in the water. Then when you go to take a breath, you still want to breathe to the side and then go right back to alligator eyes.

Buoy turns can be done a bunch of different ways. You can either do buoy turns by combining a front stroke with a backstroke in order to be able to get around that buoy or you can do sidestroking to get around that buoy, or you can just swim tight around that buoy.

So in order to do a buoy turn with what we call a "Tarzan," you'll start out with a front stroke combine it with a backstroke, and then another front stroke, and that gets you around the buoy.

There are several different types of drafting that you can do. Inline drafting is where you swim with your hands on the person in front of you's feet as close as you can, and you're able to pick up a draft that way. 

We also do arrowhead drafting, where you have a number one person in the front. Your two and three people are right behind them on their hip, always breathing to the inside and then you can add people to that crowd behind there and that's drafting!

VISUAL DESCRIPTION: The video fast forwards as swimmers dart up and down the lane of the pool. A man pops his head out of the water. A woman rests on the side of the pool. Logo. Dare2Tri. Logo. Celebrating 20 years of the National Center on Health, Physical Activity, and Disability.