Before any of the rest of it, there is a swim test.
It is not a formality and people do not pass it by turning up. Read the five below, go and try them this week, and then decide whether to book. That order round saves everybody the awkward morning.
- The length of the pool, without stoppingAny stroke, any speed. Stopping to stand is what fails it, not the time.
- The same length again with a rescue tube across your chestIt is slower and more awkward than you expect. That is the point of it.
- One minute treading water, hands out of itHands above the surface the whole minute, so the legs do all the work.
- A weight lifted off the deepest part of the floorSurface dive, collect it, bring it up. Two attempts.
- Ten minutes of doing nothing, watching waterNot a physical test. We sit you on a chair and we watch where you look.
None of it is timed except the minute. We are not looking for a fast swimmer. We are looking for somebody who is still thinking clearly at the end of the length, because that is the part of the job that is real.
The course, in the order it happens.
Five stages. The first one you do at home and the last one is marked by somebody who has never met you.
01
Before you arrive
The reading and the theory happen at home, at your own pace, and none of it is done in the room. Everybody arrives on the first morning having already covered the same ground, which is what makes the first morning worth attending.
02
The first day, in the water
Entries, approaches, and getting a person who does not want to be moved from where they are to where you need them. You will be tired in a way that surprises you, because none of it is swimming as you know it.
03
Spinal and unresponsive
The two situations where doing the obvious thing quickly is worse than doing the correct thing slowly. This is the longest part of the course and it is repeated until it stops being a decision.
04
First aid, and the phone call
Care on the deck, and the part nobody trains for: saying what has happened, clearly, to somebody who cannot see it. We make you say it out loud, to a person, with the clock running.
05
The test
Scenarios you have not been shown, run without warning, marked by somebody who did not teach you. You either can do it or you cannot, and we would rather find that out here than in July.
What the certificate does not do.
- It expires.
- Every certificate does. Ours tells you the date on the day you get it rather than leaving you to find out the week you need it.
- It is not a job.
- We hire from our own courses and we do not hire everybody from them. Passing means you may apply, and applying is a separate conversation.
- It does not transfer to open water.
- A pool is a bounded, clear, shallow, still box. Everything you learn here assumes all four of those and none of them hold at a lake.
Ask when the next one runs.
Courses run in blocks through the season and the next set of dates is the thing to ask for. Call and a person will tell you, or write and we will come back with the dates and what the day looks like.
Already certified and looking for the season? The postings are here.