Adaptive Sports

Techniques for amputees include adding fins or paddles, using flotation to help balance out their stroke and using adaptive equipment.
 
Transcript: "Well, several techniques working with amputees, with arm and legs. First thing you could, you know, depends on how much leg. You might have a single leg. Amputee he said you always can add fins, I like throwing stuff on people so fins paddles you can look at flotation to help balance all those elements out like a person's stroke and exactly where you put that flotation on the body as you know, very important as far as like double Amputees, and it's all upper body and some of those workouts. Again, use adaptive equipment and that's not so adaptive, the paddles and the fence. So quite accessible."

In order to align my everyday life with my professional one, I rely on my discipline, managing my time well, and understanding when to rest and relax. This has helped me achieve an organic alignment between the two aspects of my life.
 
Transcript: "This is such a great question. How do I align my everyday life with my professional life? For me, it's very simple. My professional, I'm lucky enough to love what I do and what I do happens to be something that I do every day. And it kind of aligns perfectly because everything about my sport, I can easily translate into real life and real life habits such as my discipline, learning how to manage my time well, learning my limits and understanding when to rest and to relax, all of that plays a role in my everyday life as well. So how do I align it? It's kind of already, it just aligned organically and just lucky that way."

I learned that I can write a memoir, that I'm an okay writer, that there were some stories I didn't want to share, and that I'm okay being vulnerable.
 
Transcript: "What did I learn about myself from writing my memoir? Well, first of all, I learned that I could write a memoir. I'd never written anything of any length before, so it taught me that I can tackle another challenge that I hadn't been to before. So it gave me some confidence. I also learned that I'm just an okay writer. Nothing special. This book is not a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's just a story. I learned there were some stories I didn't want to share. I expected to have one or two more stories in there that were just frankly too personal, too painful, embarrassing, however you want to call it, to share. But I also learned I'm okay being vulnerable. I shared a lot of stuff about my youth that maybe some authors wouldn't share. I heard that from some folks who read it. In my class, you might say, some folks with disabilities that wrote their memoirs are like, Wow, Paul, you were really personal. I really appreciate what you put out there. That's what I learned."

When I got my prosthetic leg, I was excited to go for a jog but quickly realized I was way out of shape and had to turn around and walk back. Now, after years of training, I'm able to sprint without anyone knowing I have a prosthetic.
 
Transcript: "Sam, that's a great question. And I'll tell you a funny story. When I went to go get my prosthetic leg, my process was like, OK, you just have to trust the blade. It's going to be there. You just have to trust it. So I was like, all right, that's fine. I'm just going to go take off. And it's going to do what it's supposed to do. And it did, which was surprising for me. And it felt fairly natural. And so I was super excited. I took it. I went home. I'm like, Dad, let's go out for a run, haven't been able to run for years. We get to go do this thing. And so we get out, get down the driveway. And we're jogging down the road. And in our mind, we're going to go for 20-, 30-minute jog. And I get 3 minutes down the road. And I can barely pick my leg up off the ground. I'm so fatigued. I'm out of shape. My muscles aren't used to working in that way. The blade took a lot of time getting used to. And so we ended up turning around and having to walk back to the house. And halfway there, we called mom. I was like, just come and grab us. This is not what we expected. But that was it. That was the beauty of the journey, right? It started off. And it was really difficult. But now I would say that when I run on prosthetic, if you see me sprint and you see me just from my hips up, you don't know that I have a prosthetic on. And so it's been a long journey and 10 or 11 years of training to get to that point. But yeah, at the beginning, it was tough. [CHUCKLES]"

I would say my best performance so far has been Rio 2016 in the 400 meters. I worked hard and was rewarded with a great moment to see my efforts pay off.
 
Transcript: "My best performance ever thus, far has been Rio 2016 in the 400 meters. I have a lot of Great Performances, some bitter, some sweet performances. But I would say, Rio 2016, just for the fact of the effort that I truly put in how much I really wanted it. How much I really wanted to metal and then just everything that I I'd and prepare to get myself towards being the best that I could. And I think that that was my greatest performance. And I still put in the same amount of effort of Rio, 2016. I just would say that it was a great moment to see my hard work. Pay off."

I don't make any modifications to my blades. If I need modifications done, I go straight to my prosthetist. The biggest modification I do make is drying my stump before race.
 
Transcript: "Hey, Jeannie. This is a very interesting question, because I actually don't make any modifications to my blades ever. Honestly. Um, I always go to my prosthetist because I am like such a klutz. And I definitely will be the one to like mess up something right before race. So personally, I do not deal with my blades or touch them or modify them or do anything to them before. Erase before practice. If I need any modifications done, I am like straight to my prosthetist and getting the work done there. Because like I said, I am a total Klutz and I will mess something up, and I don't have time for that. So, I do not make any modifications. The biggest modification I do make is drying my stump because my stomach gets very sweaty especially at practice, when we're doing multiple reps of things, and definitely before race, if you ever seen any of my races, Has. I am always the one sitting down. Drying my leg right before the gun goes off. So no modifications over here. My model is if it's not broke, why fix it? So that's kind of where I'm at."