Uh. Layman's terms? I am currently on my first fortress. Courtesy of the Idiot's Guide to Dwarf Fortress.

Grab Dwarf Therapist. It will save you SO MANY keystrokes you have no idea. Then, when you get an immigration wave, check out which of them have skills you need more of. Set them to not do hauling duties. The ones who have skills you don't need, or don't care about, unselect those skills and set them on haul. Follow barnox's guidelines if you like too.

Dwarf Therapist helps. Very much.
Also, a possessed metalsmith just went berserk, hunted down and killed my commander, an animal caretaker, and a stray dog. The dog was the only one who did any damage, taking two chunks of meat of of the bloody dwarf. Then, after a prolonged brawl with the remainder of my military (2 dwarves), he died from bloodloss.
I don't think I'll be sending his family a consolation card.

Get one entire immigration wave into the military and continually spar wrestling. They get legendary fairly quickly.

^ Good idea. They also have a tendency to injure each other almost mortally while training, and that leads to some really hillarious moments. (Urist McMurder punches Urist McDead: Urist McDead's lung was ripped off! and so on. )

Also, just found this on Legends mode:



So he lived over 77 years without a head.

o.O

Elf magic.

Silly DF treats heads just like any other limb.

There's a screencap on the DF forums where one sparring dwarf was just missing a lung. There was absolutely no damage except that his wrestling parter had ripped out his lung.
Also, once they're legendary wrestlers you can pretty much safely set them to spar on other things, because wrestling also increases dodge chance in addition to the toughness bonuses you'll be getting.
If you want to take it a step further, make an entire immigration wave pump operators and set up a gym full of useless pumps.
Another step you could take is to make a room fillable to 4/7 water and station them inside to learn swimming.
Make sure they can exit though, or else they'll die of thirst.

They will die of thirst. In a room full of water.

Dwarves, man.

Dwarves don't drink water. It'd be like a human being stuck in a room full of vegetable oil. Sure you could drink it, but what's the point?

Dwarves drink water, but only if they have no booze. Just look at any dwarf with both legs lopped off. They lie in a hospital bed for the rest of their life, and are brought water and food by other kindly dwarves. Not booze, water. If they are locked in a flooded room, then they won't have access to booze, and thusly should be drinking the water. So like I said.
Dwarves, man.

Nope, wounded dwarves drink water, but not healthy ones.

I wonder if legless dwarves can swim.

Non-injured dwarves will prefer to die than drink water when there is booze available but unreachable.
Legless dwarves can swim, albeit poorly.
There's a treatment for severely injured dwarves where you fill the room with 4/7 water; they slowly learn swimming, the attribute gains hopefully going into toughness. Once you get enough toughness the dwarf recovers.
I'm building a hydro-hospital in my current fortress - with perfectly measured water as well as drainage and a nearby well for when they get thirsty.
You still have to drain the room because everyone will refuse to bring water to the dwarf due to the water.
It'll double as a swimming pool to teach my military dwarves swimming, for some more attribute gains.

I hate goblins.
So much.