The drowning response is also why you are strongly advised to not get into the water to assist a drowning victim and why trained rescuers who do so violently manhandle drowning victims (if you administered similar aid on land it would look like a violent assault featuring a choke-hold delivered from behind). Drowning victims are virtually incapable of cooperation in their own rescue and their panicked struggles have the very real potential of drowning would-be rescuers.
I pulled someone out once (in flagrant violation of the above advice) -- my (possibly inaccurate) recollection is that he made no noise whatsoever between entering the water and exiting it beyond the sound of the first splash.
When I received lifeguard training 2 dozen years ago, I was taught ways of rescuing people that don't involve the use of force, and the person teaching the class strongly recommended against learning the more violent approaches that were once used.
As I recall, her claim was that they were less effective, and carried a significant risk of causing injury.
Risk of Injury is much better than drowning alongside then.. (But I'm not a lifeguard -- so I'll shutup)
// I was somewhat shocked when I did an L2 First Aid course a couple of years back. The Ambulance Officer running the class talked about CPR -- push much harder than you think you should. A couple of broken ribs will heal. A stopped heat beat wont.
Yes. I was advised by an Army medic that effective CPR will break ribs. Also, you need to blow really hard for the breathing to be effective -- you need to see the chest actually move upwards as a result of your blowing. If you've had CPR training, hopefully you had an opportunity to use a real Resusci-Annie (sp?), which has sensors indicating that your doing both the chest compression and the breathing with sufficient force.
That same medic also told me that generally the victim will vomit, probably right into your mouth.
Typically the crunching sensation you feel is tearing of the cartilage that connects the ribs to the sternum. Unless you're doing CPR on a little old lady with osteoporosis, that cartilage is going to tear before the ribs break.
Call me sexist, but once my eyes hit 'her claim' your story all made sense.
I have known many women who espouse things like this, whether it is right or not, whether it flies in the face of reality or not, because things don't line up with how they want the world to be. They'd rather pretend than go with what works. Sadly, it almost always seems to pertain to something truly serious that puts life or limb at risk.
As a female ex-lifesaver, I agree wholeheartedly with the instructor referenced in the op. There are definately techniques that don't involve force, and which work. For example one thign that you are taught is that a drowning person is never going to reach down into the water to grab you. So one technique we learned was to approach from below. Lift the person up from just below the waist (they're always in a rigid vertical body position when drowning). This way your arms and legs aren't within reach. Once the person is able to get a few deep breaths of air, they stop panicking, and you can release. Back off, come up for air yourself, and just keep repeating until they're calm enough to approach from the surface.
It's not easy though - it requires that you have a decent capacity for swimming submerged yourself, and if the person does manage to grab you with their legs or whatever, or if you make a mistake and don't back off far enough when coming up for air yourself, you can get into trouble, which is why you need to be trained before trying it.
As a lifesaver you normally have a second lifesaver with you when effecting a rescue - that person's job is to talk to the drowning person when they are being held up, telling them to relax, lie on their back etc etc. But if you don't have that second person, you just have to keep holding them up until they calm down.
The whole point of this type of technique is that it never puts the rescuer in a battle of strength with the rescuee - at any point you can get them to let go by submerging yourself, but just to be sure you've positioned yourself in a place where they aren't even likely to try to grab you, and if they do, they can't get at your arms/legs, which are well below the surface.
At any rate, getting back to your comment - the teacher's instruction had nothing with wishful thinking, and everything to do with knowledge of the most effective means of rescue - that you misinterpreted it as wishful thinking reveals that you are indeed sexist.
> It's not easy though - it requires that you have a decent capacity for swimming submerged yourself, and if the person does manage to grab you with their legs or whatever, or if you make a mistake and don't back off far enough when coming up for air yourself, you can get into trouble, which is why you need to be trained before trying it.
It sounds a lot more risky than approaching from behind and putting them in a lock. How is greater risk = more effective?
"putting them in a lock" is incredibly risky. It requires you to be strong enough to do it - if you misjudge the relative strength of the panicking person compared to yourself, they're going to latch on to you, and you may not be able to free yourself,and now you're both in trouble. The technique I described requires no such guesswork. If you do it properly (something that can be learned), you won't get into trouble, regardless of the relative strength of the two parties. The security of the rescuer is paramount in this situation. Why take the risk of misjudging the strength of the rescuee, when you can avoid having to guess?
You're running into the Dunning-Kruger effect here - you don't know what you don't know. Believe me, as someone that has been extensively trained in lifesaving, there are techniques that are safe and effective, and these techniques never rely on force. How could it be otherwise - we'd be condemning strong people to just die - "Jeez, sorry mate, I see you work out in a gym, and are probably stronger than every lifesaver on the beach, so I guess it's just bad luck for you!".
I pulled someone out once (in flagrant violation of the above advice) -- my (possibly inaccurate) recollection is that he made no noise whatsoever between entering the water and exiting it beyond the sound of the first splash.