I Tried Lifeguard Academy

on this episode of challenge accepted i am going to lifeguard academy and at the end of this video i will perform a rescue with a live victim and you'll want to watch to the end because i will be saving my fiance garrett when i think of lifeguards i think of humans at their peak physical performance without any prior training i'm going to see if i can match up against the san diego lifeguards challenge accepted my name is maureen hodges i'm the marine safety captain for city of san diego fire rescue lifeguard division we respond to a lot of emergencies water emergencies cliff rescues boat emergencies those are all life and death situations and there is a standard for our lifeguards and not everyone meets it that's just the reality of it my name's sergeant rick strobel i've been a lifeguard for over 25 years as michelle starts her day off in ocean qualifying there's going to be three events starts with the run swim run up at la jolla shores followed by the mile run mile swim from mission beach to south mission beach and then back to mission beach and finishing up with a 500 meter swim at lifeguard headquarters they have to do all three events back to back in a very short period of time a lot of people have really strong swimming backgrounds being on swim teams or water polo teams but when you get into the ocean there's a different dynamic you've got the braking waves you've got the cold water you've got wind you've got currents and when i heard michelle wanted to do the ocean qualifying i was thinking to myself well good luck but i doubt that she's gonna make the first event okay so we are here for the first event and i have never felt this under prepared and i just had all these nightmares last night about sharks eating me which sounds really ridiculous but when you look at the water like it looks really intimidating the thought of deep ocean gives me a lot of anxiety i think about the titanic shark week [Music] occasionally we do have some juvenile great white sharks but we're not going to tell her that right off the bat you're going to run down to the pier approximately a half a mile you're going to enter the water on the north side of the pier and then i'm going to get up as close as i can to the pier and use the rip current to take me out once you get to the end of the pier you want to make a nice wide turn and then start making your way into the beach the time to complete this event is 16 minutes be aware there could be stingrays stingrays mistakes the ocean but welcome yeah so we have had a few people get hit by stingrays during this event if you step on top of them you feel something squishy jump as high as you can if you leave your foot on them they'll flip their tail up hopefully we won't have that okay ready go she can run half mile runs pretty decent and the runners have an advantage in this event we're taking off in the front and i'm feeling pretty okay like my heart rate's definitely high and i'm feeling it but i'm able to like keep up when we get to the water i see everybody doing these beautiful dolphin dives to get through the waves so i tried to do it and it was nowhere near as graceful it was more like doing a bunch of pancake flops onto the waves even just getting around the pier is so hard i would swim swim swim and then have to pause and breathe and swim to swim and have to pause and breathe as i'm going out i feel like i'm getting nowhere and then all of a sudden i see this figure leap out of the water and it was a seal i definitely screamed and had to recollect myself so i lost a time there so right now our lifeguards have made it around the pier they've swam back into the beach michelle has rounded the pier so she's got seven minutes to complete this event on the way back i was doing the backstroke to try and give myself a little bit of rest and the lifeguard on the board said hey you're going backwards and i had actually turned around and started going back into the ocean it's very painfully obvious to me i do not know how to navigate the ocean here we go she's made it to the beach we're at 15 minutes so she's got to be a world record sprinter to make it go michelle finish strong all right all right strong finish good job michelle all right 17.58 one thing we left out michelle at times there are great white sharks in this area but we didn't we didn't want to scare you but they're juveniles they're juvenile white sharks they're in feeding on the rays and sand sharks they're not the bigger sharks god that was so hard and that was the first event all the other lifeguards were so good at navigating the ocean going in a straight line and doing exactly what they needed to to combat the waves and i did not combat the waves i was timid and i want to have more courage she's going to move on to the next one the mile run mile swim from mission beach to south mission beach then swim back this is really going to test her endurance the time to make on this event is 36 minutes i'm expecting them to come in around 25 minutes maybe less that's like an episode of friends yes it is what do you think about when you're swimming have a good song in your head okay i'm always like my going straight like where am i on the beach what you don't want to do is enter the water and look up am i there yet because you'll get discouraged it's gonna hurt no matter what it's just like how fast you want to be done with it okay i can do it ready go we started out on the run my heart rate got pretty high but it felt good i was able to stick with a good pace here we are at the turnaround point michelle's slightly behind less than a minute she's done a great job and there she goes let's see how she enters the water making her way through that whitewash she needs to use that dolphin technique like our other lifeguards did there she is diving under the waves and there she goes she's getting into a rhythm start that grueling swim freezing cold tons of waves and i just felt alone even though there were people all around me i felt completely alone and kind of scared [Music] [Music] i'm gonna get out there and give a little moral support i'll see you at mission beach the issue for me wasn't the action of swimming it was being able to hold my breath for multiple strokes at a time without getting anxiety so your most efficient stroke is the freestyle but if you're trying to survive you're gonna switch it up little breaststroke a little back stroke we're gonna make it she's tough it's not easy to swim in violent open water [Music] michelle's doing really great she just has about a football field length left to swim she's giving it all she's got and that's really all that we can ask for she's doing an awesome job about halfway through all the other lifeguards came back to the water and swam back with me we all start together we finish together for anybody that's trying their best to make it in we'll give them a little extra encouragement by finishing the event right alongside them i felt so supported and that was an amazing feeling to help me carry to the finish let's go michelle bring it in strong stay strong all right what was my official time uh 42-53 42-53 awesome remember the time to beat was 36 minutes but with no training whatsoever to just come out great job thank you so much for staying with me okay and it's not over yet you got one the 500 meter swim is the minimum standard set by the united states life-saving association it's what we use as a benchmark one to try out to become a lifeguard and number two all full-time lifeguards have to meet that performance standard every six months the time to beat is 10 minutes and based on what we've seen so far we think you can pass this do you stay focused if you give it everything that you have keep your head down just like all the other events try to swim as straight a line as you can we think that you can make it okay okay competitors ready go she's switching over to a side stroke keeping her momentum going we're just about two minutes into it right now all right good job michelle try to keep your head down so our first swimmers are getting to the buoy right now they're rounding it just under three minutes it's a phenomenal time let's go michelle keep that head down you're doing great even in this shorter event with much calmer water it was so hard you have to keep your head down and trust that you're going in the right direction good job good job straighten out straighten out look up look up look up look up look up all right okay so this is what happens when you start getting tired you start getting a little disoriented to be this far into the number of events she's done already and to be given this effort she's got to be exhausted her fellow competitors have finished they've come back to joining her lifeguarding you got to be strong individually but we work as a team they're coming back to support her okay michelle we're almost done this is it push let's go let's go let's go go go sprint one two three wow what a great effort all right nice job 11 minutes and 34 seconds you don't have to be the best swimmer to begin with we will help train a coach and mentor you and we will make you a good swimmer what we need is people with heart with a desire and a passion to do this job and she certainly has that and she's showing it right now i don't like to bet against people but i didn't think that you were going to complete the first event and you surprised me you didn't meet our time but you finished it and then to come here and finish it off it's very impressive so congratulations thank you you guys are animals oh my god and it only gets tougher in the winter time the waves are big and the water's cold and whatever the conditions are we have to go in to rescue people people are counting on us to do that that's what separates us from everybody else is our ability to perform in the surf in southern california in the early 1900s developers were trying to get people to come to the beach these developers realized that people drowning at the beach wasn't going to bring people to the beach so they actually went over to hawaii and they met with george freith george freit was a great hawaiian swimmer and he went through several lifeguard agencies redondo beach santa monica long beach and here in the city of san diego and was really responsible for helping get ocean lifeguarding going in southern california my name is john ball i've been a lifeguard for 35 years there's definitely like a stereotype of lifeguarding that it's just a summertime job only we're just in it to be on the beach pick up chicks the baywatch stereotype had its heyday when i started lifeguarding in the early 2000s they kind of died off for a while and then they did the remake of the movie and i think most of us roll with punches on it and we get the laugh out of it but it does water down our level of professionalism i think because we're not acting we're for real saving lives we don't have a good time on the beach we're too tuned in we're too anxious we're watching people recreate going oh that doesn't look good oh i gotta go now when you're in that tower you're the most important person on that beach so we'll try and be as preventative as possible we don't want big rescues we want to prevent them from happening if we can so ocean beach is very dynamic we have piers we have three jetties right next to the jetty you're always gonna have a rip current so you're gonna sweep from the inside to the outside and you're looking for shoulders so if someone is standing they're not drowning right look at people swimming strokes when they're out there are they jumping over the waves do they not want to get their head under the water anybody that's facing in or trying to get in is going to get my attention can you get in on your own do you need my help those are the questions that you're kind of going through in your head so you have to read people's body language from hundreds of feet away it's pretty easy when you practice your scan should take 30 seconds after you practice it more and more most cases lifeguards are seeing things develop and are already responding before people are truly in a panic state sometimes it happens really quick maybe they're starting to submerge and grasping at the water climbing the ladder and that's when your adrenaline's really going to start pumping up unfortunately we don't save everybody the national average established by the united states life-saving association estimate that one person will drown for every 18 million visitors to a guarded beach here in the city of san diego we beat that on a regular basis we give them the best chance and i'm going to give it everything that i have the ocean is dangerous it's up to having personal responsibility and knowing your limits people don't see that it's dangerous and we do because we have to put ourselves in those situations to help people that put themselves in it it's very very humbling one of the scenarios that michelle is going to be put in is responding to a boat in distress going at a high rate of speed michelle's going to have to slide her wetsuit on get to this boat hook it up and hopefully get there in time to prevent this boat from drifting into the surf line so the way this would go down in the real world as we get a call a boat's in trouble we're dead in the water how fast will we be going 40 miles an hour so i'll have to change into a wetsuit on an open boat while we're going 40 miles an hour yup that's correct i have changed at a red light before yeah well like my full clothes it's kind of similar [Music] so when we get to the broken down vessel what i usually do i take the line one full wrap around the toe post the captain says i'm in neutral go ahead and take your wraps around the horns when i do this wrap it's up and away this hand over here out and away so if it were to pull it's going to pull the line out of my hand as opposed to like this the line pulls my hand gets sucked into it what would count as a success for me 10 or 15 minutes at the most from leaving the dock here in this world time is everything san diego lifeguards coffee what's your location i am off south mission i can see a tower 10 nearby see that drop anchor if you have one and put on a life jacket [Music] three years ago now i was on a night rescue with my partner these guys went out fishing and they put out all their lobster traps before it got dark well the tide had come up they couldn't see the waves coming the first wave swapped the boat over the driver of the boat only struggled on service for about 10 to 20 seconds before he submerged the other four passengers they didn't even have time to put life jackets on so they were holding onto chairs and things like that [Music] all right keep your engines straight for me will ya we're gonna tell the surf breaking creates so much mist that we couldn't see i heard the victim screaming it was the worst scream i ever heard and i could see him just over the top of the wave just a glint of something i got to him but we were right on the crest of the waves and i could just hear it suck up and we got pounded and i was holding on to him i didn't want to let him go when we came up the citizens came out like waist deep water helping me and i was like just take the victim take him in then i went back out for the second victim and that's when i got really worked the next thing i remember was i was up on the street throwing up and trying to breathe tell me when you're done all right here we go there was water in my lungs so i spent two days in the hospital we see that never quit attitude in our recruits and we don't let people shy away from it it might happen to you like it happened to me where it's the call of your career and you need to just go funny phrase that we'd like to use is drop the burrito doesn't matter what you're doing drop the burrito and go that mentality could very well be the difference between whether or not that person lives or dies under our uniform even the chief's uniform we're all wearing red shorts i've actually been driving down by the harbor and there's been a person that fell in off the pier luckily the har police were on but i was undressing while they threw the guy a life ring it can happen at any moment our area of responsibility includes coastal cliffs ranging from 30 to 40 feet high to 500 to 600 feet and it's not uncommon for people to fall off and seriously injure themselves the scenario is that there's an unconscious or immobile person the base of the cliff so michelle is going to be hooked up into the system and then she'll be lowered over by our rescue 44 cliff rig who's this this is our rescue dummy we'll call him brad what is brad's backstory though i feel like we need to know what happened yeah so brad slipped over here and he fell down the rocks was he just walking he was just walking and he saw something in the water and he looked over and slipped so he looked over saw a sea lion slipped and then a friend called for help okay what happens now [Music] oh my god i feel so exposed i feel naked i feel naked in the sky oh we're so high up it's gonna be okay brad holy smokes looking down and knowing that gravity's not gonna be your friend in that situation is definitely something that our guards have to overcome oh my god i'm moving in to extract brad copy that oh my god i can't believe people actually fall down this oh my god it's gonna be okay brad oh no the buckles are still done okay i'll be right back brad in a cliff rescue scenario we see some pretty gnarly injuries some of them have fallen from great heights then you add in the crowd the family the friends that were with the victim all the while trying to make sure that everybody's safe and properly hooked into the system come on let's go oh that's been to in and out a few times you can do this brad maneuvering the patient onto a stretcher that's basically floating in the air is very difficult these huge waves are crashing against the rocks and i looked down at all the knots and i forgot everything stay with me brad there's so many freaking knots how many ways can you tie a potty down i had to slow down and think about okay this knot goes here and then it goes through there and then there's this rope and then there's this buckle and i can't imagine doing that with a distressed patient ready all right it's gonna be okay brad oh my god i mean yes depending on how busy it is we can make 40 60 maybe even more cliff rescues in a given year you know we get a lot of people kidding us about oh hey baywatch we sort of laugh at that because the joke is on those people they really don't know what the job's all about we were deployed as a water rescue team for hurricane katrina we saw people that lost everything saw a lot of death unfortunately we had to go rescue folks that were on top of rooftops calling for help i had young children at the time and uh one thing that hit me the most was i was going into these homes and condos to do these searches i'd open a door in that room with like a child's room i would see you know their favorite toys all their pictures i thought man those children will never come back to this they just had to leave and that's all gone you know that was very shocking but i also think we leaned on each other a little bit more when you have a team of people you've worked with for 20 25 years you have a trust built up with that team you put your life in their hands and theirs and yours and i know for me that gave me a lot of confidence definitely lifeguarding you rely on your team a lot michelle's final performance here with us she's going to put in the scenario where she affects three different types of rescues that are commonly made during the summer by our seasonal lifeguards the first one she's a crew person on one of our rescue watercraft commonly referred to as a jet ski after that she's going to use a rescue board and then the third one is going to be a rescue using swim fins and a rescue buoy we mainly put the jet ski in on a normal summer day when it's extremely busy and our seasonal tower guards are making a ton of rescues and warnings and in case a rip current really opens up and we need to pick off multiple people you'll be the crew person here on the rescue sled hold on here with one hand and then another hand on either side okay that'll kind of allow you to brace from going forward and back and side to side as well and you're going to want to put that victim one hand up here vice versa right you'll put your arms underneath their armpit area and kind of just clamp them down so i'm underneath them they're underneath you there okay who am i rescuing you're going to be rescuing garrett today we're going to put garrett in a rip current it's going to be as critical as we can get with today's conditions once you get you're going in a rip current do you know how to swim in that i'm not the worst swimmer but i'm also not the strongest swimmer our victims in the water struggling rescue watercraft's coming in michelle's helping the victim get on to the sled they're taking a little wave right now you want to calm that victim down show them where to hold on now they're going to be bringing them back into the beach another excellent tool that we have on all of our patrol vehicles is a rescue board it's got a lot of speed to it once you get moving on that you can get to your victim a lot faster than if you can swim it's not just your head out of the water you can get up on your knees and then you're gonna be three four feet up above the waves to see your victim biggest thing is that it's a big heavy thing to carry and then you're gonna have the wind blowing it one way or another so it's awkward running with yeah oh my god you'll come to a smaller wave and you can stand on the bottom lift this up slightly to get it over the wave and then just hop onto it you're just paddling it just like you would paddle a surfboard get the victim put them on and don't tip the board you want to try not to okay [Music] michelle's doing a great job she's using the technique to get over the waves she's getting out there faster she's almost to the victim right now she's got one more swell to negotiate [Music] oh nice job man drowning is really hard work guys now i have to go out and do it again lifeguards are trained from the first day in the academy you don't go anywhere without your canon fins you take them in the truck with you you take them on a patrol with you you take them to your station you want to get at least probably waist deep out you're going to briefly turn around put your fins on it's easier when you're backwards why is it easier when you're backwards because the wave will be coming back at you and it's just rushing over your back versus facing forward where you're getting blasted in the face trying to put your pins on as you get to your victim pass them the can have them grab on once you're out of the rip current you notice you're not drifting further out then you can swim your victim in a lot of the rescues we make are intense and that never changes throughout your career the of fins it's just you swimming out through the ocean and that person in need of assistance drowning maybe getting ready to take what they think is going to be their last breath you got to grab them before they go under for the last time [Music] cook she's swimming as fast as she can but the victim is still going backwards trying to keep her head up negotiating the swells as they come through she's using the rip currents that pull the victim out to try to get to them quick [Music] the classic cannon fins rescue was definitely the most intense and the most real especially when i was seeing garrett someone i loved very much it really raised the stakes for me and it brought it to a new level so michelle and her victim are now trying to negotiate their way back into the beach sometimes your victims are so exhausted they don't have any energy they can't even help you so it's dead weight and in really strong rip currents it's extremely demanding for the lifeguards looks like she's getting tired finally it took you up to three minutes to get out there and make that rescue when you use the rescue board it took about a minute and a half once you got on the rescue watercraft that same rescue took like 30 seconds so that shows the advancements that we've made in equipment and training personnel over the years for not having any experience whatsoever you've really picked this up well thank you so so much to the san diego lifeguards for letting me join you for a bit of your academy this week if you are interested in joining the san diego lifeguards or learning more about it be sure to go to san diego.gov be a lifeguard i have it linked below as well we are so grateful for our time here this week and i have so so much more respect for everything that lifeguards do if you're new here be sure to subscribe give us a like and comment below with what you want to see next thanks so much for watching bye [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Michelle Khare

Views: 1,810,282

Rating: 4.9611664 out of 5

Keywords: michelle khare, buzzfeed, lifeguard, firefighter, firefighting, beach, vacation, summer, travel, baywatch, trailer, ending, challenge accepted, lifestyle, try, for the first time, ocean qualifier, san diego, san diego lifeguards, ocean qualify, junior lifeguards, swim team, michael phelps, olympics, can and fins, rescue, jet ski, boat rescue, cliff rescue, windansea beach, california, tan, bikini, swimwear, fitness, athletic

Id: 2ZTznHGzqVQ

Length: 28min 27sec (1707 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020