Recently, I celebrated a birthday! I won’t tell you exactly which one, but suffice to say, I am confidently past the age of 30 (it took a few years actually to sink in). The day after my birthday, I spent 6 hours in a swimming pool to recertify my National Lifeguard certification.
Age-wise, I recognize that I am still young. But in lifeguarding, being in your thirties almost always puts you near or at the top age-wise. Not always, there are some excellent adult lifeguards (hi Diane!). Still, many people don’t keep their certifications once they are no longer working in aquatics and in my experience, there are very few adults working in aquatics. That’s a much longer blog post, one I am happy to write about if there is interest at a later date!
So what’s required to recertify or maintain your lifeguard certification? Every two years you need to complete a one-day recertification which includes showing that you can still meet the physical standards as well as completing practice situations of emergencies that may happen in an aquatic environment. If you are curious about what the standards are, you can view them online here.
For me, the challenge is the dreaded 400m timed swim. I hate it with a vengeance. I have failed recertifications previously due to this requirement. I have spent a lot of time complaining about it and debating its usefulness with other lifeguards. The requirement: swim 400m continuously using recognizable swimming strokes within 10 minutes. The standard pool is 25m so that’s 16 times across the pool for non-swimmers.
To be fair, I have always disliked it even as a young teenager. One of my earliest lifeguarding memories is failing my Bronze Star (very first course towards becoming a lifeguard) due to the endurance swim. I have lost out on job opportunities where they require you to complete it prior to even completing an interview. I have had staff training where we complete it, usually followed by my boss or supervisor making some sort of comment about how close I was to the time. As a teenager, my fastest ever time was just past the nine minute mark. As an adult, my fastest time in recent memory was 9:17.
Other people don’t mind the timed swim (hi again Diane!), possibly because they regularly swim longer distances or spend more time regularly lane swimming. For them, the physical challenge they likely hate is the 20-lb brick. In contrast, I love the brick and actually have my very own lifeguard brick sitting on my bookshelf at home! In case you are curious, the brick is used to practice retrieving a heavy object (i.e., a person) off the bottom of the pool and being able to carry it to the closest safe exit (side of the pool).
Anyway, I passed my recertification so I can now successfully call myself a lifeguard for another two years! Yay! As I said to Samantha “Successful NL recert! Even a year older I can still swim…”.
Mal and Sam swimming
I don’t mind the brick but every 50M sprint is a struggle. I would rather do a 3 km swim than 50M of head’s-up freestyle in under a minute.
Congrats on getting it done again – we need more representation of lifeguards at all ages.