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Training to be an rescue swimmer in the USCG?

I'm 27 and am enlisting in the Coast Guard. I'll be happy doing anything that's useful, but have dreamed of being a rescue swimmer ever since I learned that job existed. I am strong swimmer, love the water, used to be a lifeguard, have wilderness first aid and leadership experience, graduated college and love working hard. I am also a woman and am 5'4".

I am starting to train for bootcamp, and know I have a lot to pass thru before I can even think about applying to AST school. But, does anyone know anyone who's an AST? Especially a woman who's an AST? Or someone who could realistically tell me what kind of shape/training I'd have to be in before going to AST school?
Thanks!

Public Comments

1. Being female and 5'4" won't matter a darn - it's a matter of strength and drive.

Grab a cinder block (one of those gray bricks with big holes they make building out of), and jump in the pool. Now do laps with only your legs. When you get tired, do ten more laps. When you can't possible do one more STROKE, do another lap.

Then stick your feet through the holes in the cinder block - and start swimming laps using nothing but your arms. Keep doing laps.

Once you get good at those two exercises, get another cinder block and use both of them.

Another good task is to take those two cinder blocks to the deep end on one side sitting side by side. Get up at the end of the pool and swim two lengths as fast as you possibly can, and when you get back to the deep end, dive down to your cinder blocks. Pick up the one closest to the side of the pool with BOTH hands (not just one), and put it down on the other side of the other block - just like you were playing "leap frog" with them. Now grab the other block and leap over the first... all the way across the bottom of the pool. NEVER grab one with only one hand, and NEVER let them drop. You are done when you've leap-frogged them across the narrow span of the pool.

What? You can't do it in one breath? No problem!! When you get up to grab some air, swim as fast as you can to the shallow end of the pool and back while you get the air... and then dive back down to keep leap-frogging them along.

Another fun exercise is to take two cinder blocks - one in each hand - and "bounce" them from one end of the pool to the other. Start in the shallow end and jump as high as you can with one block in each hand... jump up and forward. Keep jumping until you hit the wall at the far side of the deep end... then turn around and jump back to the shallow end. Lather, rinse, repeat until you can do 25 full laps.

Another fun one is to take a basketball to the pool - and push it down to the bottom of the deep end. Keep it on the bottom of the pool for a full 30 seconds - and then come back up. You have 30 seconds to catch your breath - and then take it back down to the bottom. Do this for TEN minutes... (ten times down to the bottom for 30 seconds) If you come up early - the ten minute timer starts over!!

One I used to do (no, I'm not an AST, I just like to be underwater), is to take a cheap, ceramic coffee mug and throw it over my shoulder into the deep end. Then, without looking, talk down to the shallow end and put a blindfold over my eyes... submerge myself and swim underwater to the deep end and find the mug WITHOUT coming up for air.

After talking with several friends who are AST's, they have a higher attrition rate than for ANY other school the Coast Guard has. You need to be in the best shape you've ever been in to survive, and this has nothing to do with size or gender.

But you'd better move quick. You have to be enlisted BEFORE you turn 28 or you won't get in.

Good luck!