Overcoming aquatic obstacles

Right at this moment I'm sitting in my motel room enjoying solitude, clean everything and order. Earlier this afternoon I was having a bit of a moment. I've just finished day 2 of the Royal Life Saving Society's Lifeguard package. Yesterday consisted of our First Aid and Bronze Medallion. First Aid was quite straight forward, bandages, scenarios, and all that jazz. Bronze Medallion was a little more challenging. We had to complete a number of different tasks to pass including a 400m swim in under 13 minutes (killed it), a 100m rescue, thats 50m as fast as you can and 50m back cross chest towing an unconscious person and a number of other tows and rescue methods to learn.

These methods came in handy at the end of the day when we were all given different initiatives to tackle. We imagined ourselves as a team working at our local pool (using the dive pool, which is segregated from the others which were in use). One of us recognised the emergency and the other was instructed to help in what way the person who recognised the problem saw fit. Again, I got fairly good feedback about how we handled it. We have a couple of great actors in our group so had a great pair to portray the scenarios quite accurately. Ours involved a blind man who tripped and fell into the pool and a man doing laps having a heart attack. It trains you to decide on a pinpoint which is the more critical patient and how to help rescue them. It could be a case of simply throwing a flotation device to help the person in less trouble to float and calm down while you can organise rescue of the more dire case.

Today we changed from being those who are covered by the Good Samaritan Act and having the skills to preserve life if required but being able to refuse responsibility to help to taking the place of the lifeguard and actively taking it on as a duty of care to rescue anyone in trouble*. Today we spent most time on how to create good rapport with patrons of the places you will guard, supervision and risk identification. We also put a considerable amount of time into perfecting our spinal rescues in a team of 4 or 5. This was all done indoors to avoid the breeze which would only freeze the 'victim' on the board more than they already had from drifting in and out of the meniscus of water while on the spinal board.

At the end of the day we moved outside to the dive pool where our trainer had placed 4 or 5 blocks wrapped in towelling material and tape to hold it together at the bottom. If we are to be guarding at a pool with a deep end more than 3m deep we have to duck dive to grab one of the blocks. I say have as I haven't as yet attempted it. Our town's pool has 2 dive boards, requiring a depth of 3.5m. That 3.5m is a place an unconscious person could possibly sink to. Now I have asthma which growing up was a pain and jumping off the big board into deep water gives me anxiety as a result. It feels similar to claustrophobia. Adding in the past experiences of having trouble breathing, and the ability to hold a good, wholesome breath for longer than a few seconds being out of my grasp for the majority of my lifetime and you end up with, I think, a more rational understanding of why I find plummeting yourself to the bottom of hundreds of tonnes of water to pick up a block intimidating. Remembering I've only in the past 5 years grown my fins and taken up the enjoyment of swimming. I learnt to swim at a young age, I could barely escape it as an Aussie and my mum and all my siblings love being in the water but it never meant that I enjoyed it. It's a purely psychological issue and I need to get over it. Tomorrow I'm gonna do the best I can, now that I've weeded out the specific reasons behind why I felt paralysed when she told us 'Now jump in and pick up one of those blocks'. I'll just have to harden up and practice some good Buteyko sessions tonight in preparation.

Wish me luck!


EDIT: Update! I made the 3.6m to pick up a brick wrapped in towels. It's heavier than you think it's gonna be but I made it! Yay!

*Side note: The Good Samaritan Act covers you to do your part in preserving life to the level of your training or refusing to do anything at all, but once you've taken the responsibility to help you must see it through.

*Another note: Buteyko breathing is a training method used to improve breathing functioning in people who have trouble with respiration, including asthmatics, people with sleep breathing disorders and others. Can recommend.