September 2018 - Parks & Recreation - 100

OPERATIONS
Stress to Success for Lifeguards
Lifeguard drills based on military science
By Becky Herz

A

re your lifeguards prepared for the stress and fear involved in
an actual emergency? Intuitively, we know that no 16-yearold lifeguard is going to remain calm with a resting heart rate
while performing CPR; yet, we typically train this skill in a
relaxed classroom setting.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SUNRISE RECREATION AND PARK DISTRICT

Standard aquatics trainings will
teach and strengthen rescue skills,
but they don't necessarily prepare
lifeguards for the psychological
and physiological stress of life-anddeath situations. To better prepare
their staff for real emergencies,
aquatic managers can learn from
the military research and methods,

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Parks & Recreation

as outlined by David Grossman in
On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and
in Peace and Bruce Siddle in Sharpening the Warriors Edge: The Psychology & Science of Training. Just as
the military has developed training
techniques to prepare soldiers for
peak performance in stressful situations, the aquatics industry can
incorporate trainings that prepare
lifeguards for success during times
of fear, stress and physical exertion.
Preparing for emergency action
includes recognizing that stress
and fear increase the rescuer's
heart rate, sending more oxygenated blood through the body. Physiologically, this improves the strength
and endurance of large muscles,
but hampers the performance of
fine-motor skills. Psychologically,
as the heart rate increases, a person's complex thinking will first
heighten and then diminish, while
their automatic processing will
steadily increase. Incorporating
stress training into an aquatic program will give lifeguards the tools
they need to perform their skills in
an actual emergency.
To better prepare staff for actual
emergencies, aquatic managers should
incorporate stress training along with
rescue skills.

| S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 8 | W W W. PA R K S A N D R E C R E AT I O N . O R G

Military Tactical Drills
There are four types of military
tactical drills that can be incorporated in aquatics trainings: speed,
exertion, limitation and desensitization. Let's look more in-depth
into two of these drills:
Speed Drills - During speed
drills, lifeguards perform a specific task quickly, while being timed.
As the lifeguards meet the speed
goals of a simple skill, additional skills are added to increase the
complexity of the task. Speed drills
create muscle memory so that the
complex tasks eventually become
part of the lifeguard's automatic
response. Here is an example of a
speed drill, developed by my colleague Pete DeQuincy, for a passive victim in shallow water:
1. Enter the water, get the victim
and put the victim on the tube
(start with 12 seconds, then
steadily reduce time until lifeguards can do it in 6 seconds).
2. Add getting the victim to the side
of the pool (again, start with 12
seconds, then add a second rescuer and reduce time to 8 seconds).
3. Add removing the victim from
the pool (keep at 8 seconds).
4. Do a head-tilt-chin-lift, check for
pulse and position the second
rescuer for compressions (allow
10 seconds).
As lifeguards move through the
stages of this speed drill, their rescues will look less like text-book
skills but should continue to meet
all the objectives of a rescue, such



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