Who doesn’t know our Olympic swimming heroes with lifeguard certification online? Pieter van den Hoogenband, Ranomi Kromowidjojo or Inge de Bruijn. We do well in swimming, you can say that we Dutch are real water people.
Even if you have a disability, you can be active in the water. Adapted swimming or para-swimming is a versatile sport with lifeguard certification online. That is not only fun to do but also offers several therapeutic benefits.
With a few minor adjustments. Swimming pools can be made accessible to allow swimmers with disabilities. To participate in a full-body workout with little to no strain, impact, or pain.
Why swim?
Swimming is a low-impact sport that promotes physical skills, fitness, injury rehabilitation, and mental wellbeing. Swimming is simply good for everyone! In addition, recreational swimming is good for relaxation, and swimming in-game/exercise form provides. A competitive element. And because public swimming pools are accessible to everyone. It also offers an opportunity to build social contacts.
In the water, you use your joints without putting stress on them and have less risk of injury than in most other adapted sports. Due to weightlessness, many people with disabilities report that their chronic pain decreases when they are in the water.
Hope Whitmore, a Guardian author who ended up in a wheelchair later in life, wrote in her 2013 article “ Swimming is the perfect sport for people with disabilities ”. She wrote that she experienced great relief from her physical pain by swimming; “swimming gave me back a freedom I thought I had lost…I took off quickly and easily swam as far as I ever ran.”
Adapted swimming is for (almost) everyone
Whether you are young or old, have a visual or physical disability… adapted swimming is possible for (almost) everyone! More than 6,000 swimmers with disabilities are members of a swimming club and are regularly active in the water by obtaining a swimming diploma, competitive swimming, water basketball, or other water activities.
In 2013, the KNZB (Royal Dutch Swimming Federation) developed the Masterplan Limitless Swimming. The KNZB works together with the Johan Cruyff Foundation on various projects to promote and encourage swimming for people with disabilities. Much has been developed and organized in recent years to support associations and to guide talented swimmers with disabilities in the region.
Accessible pools
Most pools are accessible and often have different options to support disabled swimmers in the water, making them feel free, but also safe.
Inquire in advance about the possibilities of the swimming pool you want to go to.
A pool may have a zero-depth access point, a lifter, a platform lift, or a ramp to help swimmers enter the water.
Brightly colored runway barriers help people with visual impairments identify the boundaries around the runways.
Textured edges, walls, and floors help visually impaired swimmers safely estimate distances and perform turns.
Sometimes a trained staff member or guide is positioned at the end of the pool to tap swimmers if they need to turn.
In competitive swimming athletes can start from three different positions in order to connect to their capacities: standing, sitting, or in the water.
Adapted competitive swimming
During adapted swimming competitions, such as the Paralympic Games, athletes are classified based on how much their disability affects their performance in the water.
Classes S1 through S10 represent people with physical disabilities. With athletes in the S1 class having a greater impact on their performance than those in S10.
“S” indicates that the competition is freestyle, backstroke, or butterfly, “SB” means breaststroke, and “SM” means medley. Classes S11, S12, and S13are reserved for the blind and partially sighted and S14 is for athletes with intellectual disabilities.
In front crawl competitions, some swimmers are classified in lower classes than they would be classified for other swimming styles. This stroke requires more leg propulsion and therefore their handicap has a major influence on their performance.
Paralympic swimmers
Do you know these heroes too? The most celebrated Paralympic athlete ever is American Trischa Zorn. A visually impaired swimmer with a record 55 medals at 7 Paralympic Games. (41 gold, 9 silver, and 5 bronze). She set an unparalleled record by winning 12 gold medals at the 1988 Seoul Paralympic Games.
Another athlete who has broken multiple records is Béatrice Hess of France. A swimmer with cerebral palsy that didn’t stop her from earning the appropriate nickname ‘ Thorpedo ‘: in Sydney, she broke 9 world records. Both will be succeeded by the young Australian Jacqueline Freney, already regarded as one of the greatest swimmers of all time, who won 8 gold medals at the 2012 London Paralympic Games.
