When I trained lifeguards this was the most important lesson, bar none.
I personally have never seen IDR look like 'climbing a ladder' (hands are usually out sideways, though I'm not doubting other's more comprehensive experience). But head tilted right back, so the mouth is the highest point of the body, and only the face visible, that's been the key. The nasty thing is that, in an outdoor environment where the water isn't transparent, this means that drowning people are very difficult to spot. Most of my years spent lifeguarding were hours spent counting and memorising people: 28 people in this section, two leaving, three boys with blonde hair horseplaying, twelve girls kicking up splashes, watch for the dark haired girl in green who is bouncing along not swimming, careful of the four people the splashes are obscuring...
There is a series of videos on Youtube with examples from some big pool.
I thought, now I know what to look for, how hard can it be?
Turns out, very.
I watched twenty videos or so. Not once did I see the guy in trouble before the lifeguard blew the whistle and jumped in.
Usually not even after watching him the first few meters swim (and thus limiting the possible area to watch).
Not to downplay the skill involved in lifeguarding, but the camera position/focal length in most of those videos offers an absolutely terrible view of those swimming compared to what the lifeguard can see.
In my experience, the challenge of lifeguarding is mostly a mental battle to stay focused. It's not that hard to spot people who are drowning if you're paying attention to what's going on, especially if you know what IDR actually looks like, as detailed in the OP. It's also pretty easy to pick out the people who are most likely to need to be saved just by watching them move in the water. But again, being able to pick up on that requires focus.
Watch the lifeguard during this. She's covering her area, but stops sweeping it a few seconds into the vid, she looks down, checks back towards the middle, looks away, checks back. She begins to move into space to enter as soon as the kid's ring flips and is in the water as soon as he goes vertical. An excellent bit of guarding, totally exemplary. I'd be very surprised if she didn't mentally note him as a high risk a while before this.
I've just watched a number of videos from that series. The #1 thing to look for in that pool is tube flips, most of which can be predicted by looking at who is monkeying around with their tube in some strange way.
That said, I can't spot anything nearly as fast as the guards do. And the I replay the video, knowing just who to watch and sometimes I'm surprised at how long they've been in the water when the guard finds them.
I can't really see the "ladder climbing" referenced elsewhere, but the style of "swimming" that goes on during drowning does stand out after you've seen a few. There were a few times where I thought the person was still swimming at first, especially the kids trying to swim back to their tube and failing, but even then you can sort of see a change in their behavior when instinct takes over and their body just starts jerking around.
EDIT: Here's a good example of what I mean. Watch how their swimming suddenly changes when they start drowning and their arms begin thrashing. I actually found this one before the guard whistled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXFgOBjk860
I watched about 30 of those videos and enjoyed the challenge. Like a moving Where's Waldo.
I agree about the tube flips. It was almost always a kid in a tube that leans over too far and then gets dumped out. Once I knew what to look for, I usually saw it about a second or two before the lifeguard. I was very focused, and it helps to know that the drowning is going to occur in the next few seconds. I would be very stressed out working as life guard, having to do this search all day for real!
In a couple of videos, the victim was a parent with child that left their tube and was struggling to both swim and hold their child above water. There was one tricky case where two people were swimming to get the same tube, and the one who got there second, thus losing the tube, started drowning. I was surprised that this person could switch from swimming to drowning so quickly.
It was also scary to see people in the pool next to the drowning victims not react at all. Validated the article.
> was struggling to both swim and hold their child above water
Rescuing active drowning victims (this kind of drowning) is very dangerous, for that reason. The victim won't just hold you, they'll climb you. And keep climbing until their head and shoulders are out of the water. Because your combined bodies have finite buoyancy this means you go down. The victim doesn't have to be big to push you under. It is nothing to do with strength at all, and nothing to do with how strong a swimmer you are. I defy any strong swimmer to tread water for more than a couple of seconds with a 6 year old on their shoulders.
So a lifeguard without a flotation device has to approach victims very differently. Normally from behind, where they can't be climbed. Their aim is to get the victims head only just above the water. The victim is panicked, and won't like that one bit. Some of the rescues in the video aren't that great for that reason: the lifeguard doesn't keep the buoy between them and the victim, putting them one slip of the buoy away from a possible double drowning.
I've heard LGTIs tell students that in extreme cases they should wait for the victim to go passive (lose consciousness) before a rescue, if they can't approach safely. I'd never teach that, because it is unnecessarily callous and easy to misinterpret. But as a rescuer you do have to be prepared to swim down to get the victim to release you. Being safe around a drowning person is hard, and most lifeguard trainees massively overrate their swimming power in that situation. That's why there are so many multiple drownings.
> I was surprised that this person could switch from swimming to drowning so quickly.
That's a really good point. It is surprising how folks you mark as being 'okay swimmers' can change immediately something goes wrong. I think it is the power of that instinct. I don't know how many people gradually get into difficulty, then begin drowning. It's rare, I think. More common something in their brain switches from 'in control' to 'panic' and the body takes over.
> Rescuing active drowning victims (this kind of drowning) is very dangerous, for that reason. The victim won't just hold you, they'll climb you.
My only save as a lifeguard was a double for this very reason: the drowning kid's older brother jumped in to save him, and they both went under as the younger one scrambled for air.
"Good thing I jumped in after you, huh?" said the older brother, after I dragged them to the side. I wanted to punch him.
I watched a bunch more and now I feel better able to spot them just by looking for the swimming style. Seeing people go from ok to drowning is something I wouldn't recognize without having watched these.
This one was too easy; spotted it almost immediately into the video. It's usually fairly easy to spot people "out of their element"--he was not floating with the waves and was going under every single time.
I had my eye on him so much I was afraid I was going to miss the "real" victim and I had to force myself to keep scanning :/ Just as bad.
Yeah, after training my eyes on these videos, I just sort of defocus and watch for the drowning person's swim and I can often spot them before the guard whistles (obviously, I have huge advantages and have seen them more than once).
There's one were a few people thought the guard was too fast--they went in immediately after someone flipped their tube and went down head first. But I've seen enough of the other videos to recognize the fact that they really were drowning at that point.
I just thought that one video was a good example of how everything changes once someone starts drowning, because it wasn't a tube flip or anything like that. It was just someone who had a few waves knock them under and cause their instincts to switch on and you can see exactly where the transition occurs and they go from swimming (if struggling) to drowning.
Looks like the kids parent saw him too at about the same time, the lifeguard was just a much stronger swimmer and got to him first. Agreed that it was excellent guarding, must be tough in a crowded pool full of kids that are barely able to swim like that.
It sounds like some cameras hooked to face-recognition software would be a good defence-in-depth here. Detect when a face "disappears" for longer than a given interval without leaving the water perimeter, and start an alarm that needs the life-guard's manual override to stop.
Do you really constantly count and succeed to memorize all of them? Would assisted computer recognition of disappearing bodies allow a lifeguard to watch a bigger beach? It seems like people constantly swim outside the dedicated flags, so it could be an improvement.
I did count okay, and attempted to remember people, especially those I wanted to keep track of: anyone on their own, weak swimming individuals, people who might have their mind elsewhere, etc. A whole count and a count of the groups was enough. But you're right, it changes constantly. It takes concentration.
People tend to get in difficulty particularly if they go out in a group (threes are the worst, ime), and the others move away or swim deeper, or come in. So I noticed problems more than once when a group didn't tally ('there were four friends there, where's the other one?')
Because of the property I ran, the count was feasible, but on a long beach or a packed facility it probably wouldn't be. We had around 50:1 ratio max. I tried a bunch of stuff with my team, but it was the thing that worked best.
There are bits of tech to do some spotting, and there are companies that do 'remote' lifeguarding (i.e. offshore people watching video, with an onsite guard in case something happens). I can't speak to the use of that, because we had state regulations that meant we had specific staffing structure.
I personally have never seen IDR look like 'climbing a ladder' (hands are usually out sideways, though I'm not doubting other's more comprehensive experience). But head tilted right back, so the mouth is the highest point of the body, and only the face visible, that's been the key. The nasty thing is that, in an outdoor environment where the water isn't transparent, this means that drowning people are very difficult to spot. Most of my years spent lifeguarding were hours spent counting and memorising people: 28 people in this section, two leaving, three boys with blonde hair horseplaying, twelve girls kicking up splashes, watch for the dark haired girl in green who is bouncing along not swimming, careful of the four people the splashes are obscuring...