Today, I had another lesson with Tabitha. After Sunday’s lifeguarding class, my main concern was being able to do the head splint with a submerged victim skill properly.
My biggest problem with this skill is that I float. In many applications, it’s good to float. When I need to tread water, I can do so with very little effort. I don’t have any trouble staying afloat for long periods of time.
So, when I try to go down under water for any period of time, I literally have to fight the water to stay down. Even with some of my best dives, I have a short amount of time for the rescue. Feet first dives don’t seem to work for me. I can sort of do them and I can get both feet to the bottom. But, it seems that successful rescues will involve a head first dive.
Tabitha and I spent most of the lesson working on dives and rescues. I was able to rescue her several times. The test will be if I can rescue the instructor. He sinks.
So far, I am glad that we don’t have a really deep pool. I’d probably be struggling if we had to rescue victims in nine feet water.
After a few successful rescues, we went back to working on the breaststroke. My kick has improved and my feet stay in the water more. But, I still need lots of practice.
Maybe next week we’ll tackle the butterfly.