How to Become a Lifeguard Instructor

Welcome to the kickoff of the CPR to CEO's Lifeguard Trainer Series! In this episode, Dave Kotz breaks down everything you need to know about becoming a certified lifeguard instructor—whether you're a seasoned guard ready to step up, or someone looking to add a rewarding (and flexible) role to your career portfolio.

Drawing from decades of experience training lifeguards, instructors, and instructor trainers across the U.S., Dave walks you through the good, the challenging, and the truly life-changing parts of becoming a lifeguard instructor.

You’ll Learn:

• What a Lifeguard Instructor Actually Does
• Who Should Become One (and Why)
• Training Requirements and Time Commitment
• Costs, Materials, and What’s Included
• Teaching Skills vs. Lifeguarding Skills
• Career Opportunities (Full-Time, Part-Time, and Side Hustles)
• How to Succeed in the Instructor Course
• Common Mistakes New Instructors Make
• The Power of Co-Teaching
• How to Grow from Good to Great

Quick Story:
Dave shares the inspiring moment he helped a nervous new instructor find her voice—she’s now a top-tier trainer more than a decade later. Proof that belief, preparation, and mentorship can change your career trajectory.

Action Challenge:
If you're considering becoming a lifeguard instructor, take the next step today. Visit www.CPRtoCEO.com to download our Lifeguard Instructor Starter Kit and get a feel for what it takes to dive in.

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💬 Got a lifeguarding story or question? Drop it in the comments or use #CPRtoCEO

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🛑 Disclaimer: The insights, strategies, and stories shared on CPR to CEO are for educational and informational purposes only. We don’t guarantee wealth, business success, or life transformation by applying anything from this podcast. Your results depend on your work ethic, decisions, and unique circumstances.

Stay safe. Stay sharp. See you next time.

—Dave Jacobs Kotz

Transcript

0:05

Hi everyone. It's Dave Kotz here from CPR to CEO. I'm happy to have you here at what's gonna be our number one issue of Lifeguard Trainer to CEO. It's the lifeguard series. For those of you who haven't met me before or seen me on the first time here, let me just give you a little bit of my background. I've been doing this an awfully long time. I'm a American Red Cross lifeguard, lifeguard instructor trainer, and I used to be an American Red lifeguard educator, so I was at the tip of the spear there, the highest level you can get. I was training other people to become lifeguard instructor trainers at the National Academies that the American Red Cross runs. All that's well and good, but I also run a company, National Safety Training Center. We are one of the largest training entities in the United States. We trained thousands and thousands of lifeguards and CPR students and babysitting students, et cetera, et cetera. Suffices to say, we've taught a lot of students, and I wanna give you some thoughts and ideas around becoming a lifeguard instructor. The good. The Bad. The Opportunities. So buckle up, let's get into it and talk about lifeguard instructor certification. So what exactly is a lifeguard instructor certification? Very simply, this is the license you need, whether it's from the American Red Cross or any other entity that allows you to train other people to become certified lifeguards. Pretty simple. Why would you wanna do this? Glad you asked. Some people think of this as a summer job. It could be perfect if you're a school teacher or you have summers off for any other reason. Could be you're a college student. This is a great path to become a lifeguard instructor and these positions are in demand. So, there are a couple different kind of paths you can go down as lifeguard instructor. You can be in municipal recreation; work for a town pool. You can be in the aquatics industry, be that at one of the large national brands of YMCA, a JCC, any of the fitness chains, or you can go into water rescue or lifeguard instructor as a entry to public safety. There are literally lifeguard entities that are embedded in fire departments all over the world. It's a great way to get in. Not everyone knows that. What's the difference between lifeguarding and lifeguard instructor? Very simply, lifeguards are the people in the water making the rescues. Lifeguard instructors are the ones in the classroom creating the lifesavers in the classroom. Let me restate that. Lifeguards make saves in the water. Lifeguard instructors make life savers in the classroom. I like that. All right, so now that we got the basics underway here, you wanna become a lifeguard instructor? Great. What's the timeline? What's your level of commitment? What's this going- how's this gonna work for you? Number one is you have to be an experienced lifeguard. If you're not an experienced lifeguard, you're not gonna get as much out of becoming an instructor. So we want you to be an experienced lifeguard. Current prerequisites to become an American Red Cross lifeguard instructor, you must be 17 years old. There are other lifeguard organizations out there. Next most popular might be StarGuard Elite, or Jeff Ellis and Associates. Both are wonderful lifeguard organizations. Nothing wrong with them, but the Red Cross has at least 80% market share. They're the most common and easily recognizable lifeguard certification out there. So, 17 years old. You need to have some experience. The more experience you have as a lifeguard, the more you're gonna learn and get out of it as a lifeguard instructor. Time commitment, how much time is this gonna take? You already spent some time becoming a lifeguard and getting experience. The lifeguard instructor course specifically does have some online content. It might take you a few hours, but then you're gonna spend two and a half or two really long days doing your lifeguarding in person class. What are you gonna do there? You're gonna polish and perfect your lifeguarding skills and your classroom management skills. So you're taking a step up. Not only you're gonna be a lifeguard and have to demonstrate those lifeguard skills properly and be able to teach them, but you have to be able to manage your classroom space. And that's a challenge. We can have the world's best lifeguards, but unless they can teach, they will not be effective lifeguard instructors. Also, that means you can be an awesome instructor, but if you're not familiar with lifeguarding and can't perform the skills of lifeguarding, you won't be successful either. So you have to have that imaginary Venn diagram of lifeguard experience, teaching experience, the intersection of which makes you very good chances of becoming an excellent lifeguard instructor. Now you may ask. What is this gonna cost me? If you're working for an organization, they may pay for everything, so it may cost you zero. If you're doing this on your own and you think this is gonna be how you break into your next job or career path, it might cost you a couple hundred bucks. There are lifeguard classes out there, lifeguard instructor classes out there that might be 500 or more dollars. Plus you're gonna need some other pieces of equipment. You may need lifeguard manuals. Now the nice part about specifically the American Red Cross is all the written materials are available to you for free, and let's be more clear. It just means they're included in the Red Cross administrative fees that you're gonna pay. There's no free lunch out there. So you're gonna need some manuals and you need some access to videos and those type of things. You need to be able to follow a lesson plan. This is the thing that is most interesting for lifeguard instructors. You don't have to create it. You don't have to create the lesson plans like you would if you were a water safety instructor or WSI. You need to be able to follow the existing lesson plans that are given to you by your training organization. Be that Jeff Ellis, StarGuard Elite, or the American Red Cross. They all have existing lesson plans that all you need to do is follow the lesson plan. You are also gonna need to be able to teach people from fairly diverse backgrounds. Lifeguarding is a sport for everybody. You will have every kind of person you've seen in the world come through your classes as a lifeguard and as a lifeguard instructor. We see everything, every shape, size, color, religion. Woo. Everything. You need to be able to work with these people no matter what their particular background is. Sometimes there may be a language difficulty. Sometimes there may be a culture difficulty. There may be a clothing issue with them for what they wear in the water. All of these things are easy to overcome. You just need to be aware of them and work with your students ahead of time to maximize their success. What is the career potential of becoming a lifeguard instructor? Haha. Let me tell you. There are tremendous opportunities in teaching lifeguarding courses, and they're very focused. You could work at yMCA or a JCC. There are multiple water parks around the country, some year round, some seasonal. All of them need lifeguard instructors. Then there's municipal recreation, your town pool. They also need lifeguard instructors. They may hire them individually. They may become employees, or they may outsource that contract. Can you do this full time? Yes, you can. Particularly if you're looking seasonally, at least in the northern areas of the world. I'm in the Northeast United States in particular. We have a huge demand for lifeguarding courses may through mid-July. After that it slows down a little bit, but those three or four months, we are wackadoo busy. So there's huge opportunities in a short period of time. So that's full time. You can also do this part-time, whether you are working as a public safety professional, be that EMS, fire police, et cetera. Can you have a side hustle as a lifeguard instructor? Absolutely. We know people who make that successful. There are several in our network of folks that do this very, very effectively. Whether again, you're a school teacher or public safety professional, almost anything else. It's odd. We literally have folks from physicians, medical doctors. Attorneys that are also lifeguard instructors. So it's suitable for almost anybody. And let's face it, the most successful folks are the ones who can make the education fun. So they bring with them their background, their skills, their personality, and when they make the classes fun for people. That's how they are successful. So we talked a little bit about settings, people that hire lifeguard instructors, everything from your local gym again, be that a YMCA, JCC, Lifetime Fitness, whatever you have around you. It could be a local pool club. In our area, there's Berkeley Aquatics. Could be a swim team organization. It could be a school system. Many school systems around the country have dedicated pools in their schools, and that's a great way to do things, too. A lot of great training can happen in the school system. We talked about municipal recreation centers and your local town pool. That could be indoors, it could be outdoors, it could be both. And then there's businesses like mine. We run a training business. We are a large training provider. We would love to hire awesome or elite lifeguard instructors. That could be you. We, again, we can do it part-time, full-time, almost anything. The demand is actually quite high, and again, particularly in our area for the several months between May and July. Now you're probably wanting, I got you all excited. How do I pass the instructor course? I can tell you. There's a couple things you need to do. So first, you need to prepare. You have to be familiar with the course materials. Spend the time learning the course materials. The index is your friend. Learn where things are in the book. Learn how to find them. Index and glossary; do it. In particular, the Red Cross has a focus on skill charts and assessment tools. You need to be able to use these specifically to determine if the students in your lifeguard instructor class are able to pass that portion. So being able to effectively use skill charts and assessment tool is an essential component to becoming a lifeguard instructor. Lastly, you need to be familiar with the equipment. If we bring you onto the pool deck and it's the first time you've seen a CJ backboard, that is not an advantage for you. You need to be familiar with a lot of the equipment that gets used in the industry. When we do classes, we try and bring a diversity of equipment. So we'll bring a CJ backboard and then we'll bring more of a traditional backboard. We may even bring in old school wooden backboard as well. You never know what you're gonna be presented without in the world, so we'd like to give you exposure to all of the choices that you may find available. And backboard is just one good example. Head block systems is another. Sometimes rescue tubes can be challenging. Some people have very long rescue tubes. Some people have short rescue tubes. Some are polyurethane coated and some are just foam. And some are the hard plastic types that you see in Baywatch, et cetera. Not used so much at indoor pools, but they exist and they're valid. Do you need prior teaching experience to become a lifeguard instructor? No, you don't. We can make almost anybody a lifeguard instructor. The lifeguard instructor trainers that at least I'm familiar with, are very talented and the tools that our training organization, again, particularly the American Red Cross, gives us our excellent training tools, and we can train almost anyone to become a lifeguard instructor. However, becoming a good lifeguard instructor takes significantly more effort. Teaching experience is very handy here. Can you follow a lesson plan? Great. That's the check mark, but can you follow the lesson plan and make it interesting and fun while following the lesson plan is what will separate you from the average lifeguard instructor. Co-teaching is a phenomenal way to gain practical experience as a new instructor. Some organizations actually require that you co-teach as a condition, as you become a more experienced instructor, they'll have a co-teaching standard, and I'm just thinking of StarGuard Elite, in this particular case. When you become a level one instructor, you can't teach by yourself yet. That's at level two. So becoming an instructor but be requiring you to have another more experienced instructor with you for the class, is truly an excellent idea. We encourage it as an American Red Cross lifeguard instructors. We just don't require it like StarGuard Elite does. I think StarGuard's onto something here. Co-teaching, like it. Someone's asked me what are the biggest mistakes new instructors make? I'm gonna tell you what I think they are and then I'm gonna tell you a quick story. The biggest mistake, I think new instructors make is selling themselves short. Believe in yourself. You've been trained. Hopefully you've been trained very well, and you have expert knowledge in how to create new lifeguards. Don't diminish that. That is an amazing set of skills that not everyone has, and not everyone is as good as you are. So don't sell yourself short. Now, here's the story time. I will never forget working with one particular new lifeguard instructor, and I think she knows who she is when she sees this video. We were at a summer camp in Pennsylvania and we were co-teaching. There were three lifeguard instructors for a group of, I think 27 future or potential lifeguards. And it was time for this new instructor to deliver some course content. I think they were gonna do active rescues at the surface, and they stood up in front of these 27 teenagers effectively and froze. I had to go up behind that particular new instructor and just tell her to breathe. I literally said, breathe, you got this, you can do it. And I watched her take a deep breath and she has been on a tear ever since. She is an amazing instructor. I watch her now and I'm very impressed with what she's doing in aquatics. She's still working in aquatics 12 years later. It's a wonderful fraternity or sorority that we follow the people who come through our classes and are successful, and it's so nice to monitor them as they continue their success in their given field, which is really cool. Hey, that could have been you. It could have been your friend. It will be you at some point where you, all you need is just a quick pause, a tactical pause as it were, and then continue your thought. The people in front of you don't have any idea that you're a duck, and you may look calm on the surface, but your legs are paddling, all kinds of crazy under the water. Look calm on the surface. Take a tactical pause, take a deep breath, and then continue your lesson. Everyone will think you're brilliant, trust me. Okay, let's talk takeaways. What can we do to be a lifeguard? There's plenty of opportunity for lifeguards out there, lifeguard instructors, plenty of opportunity. Most people can become a lifeguard instructor. Fewer people can become a good lifeguard instructor, and very few will become great lifeguard instructors. You can do it. It's how you adapt your personality, your background, your skills, and how you add that to following the lesson plan and let your personality shine to deliver your courses; that will make you a truly excellent lifeguard instructor. The other thing we'll tell you how to become successful, proper preparation prevents poor performance. Some people put extra words in there, but that's pretty much a good summary. The more you prepare for your class, the more you're familiar with materials, the more successful you will be. Not just as a lifeguard instructor, but pretty much everything else in your life, too. So we've learned a lot. We've learned, hopefully from my experience, I certainly learned when I was a young lifeguard instructor back in the eighties. Now I'm older, in experienced. I. I'm gonna invite you to do a couple things. One is you can get our lifeguard instructor business starter kit by clicking at the link below or going to our website cprtoceo.com. You can also follow us here on YouTube. We have a short series and then we have a longer series as well. But we'll have the links in the description box below for both of those content blocks. Hopefully we'll continue to provide you with interesting subject matter that you will follow. Hey, again, thank you so much for listening to CPR to CEO Lifeguard Instructor edition. I hope wish you a happy summer training season and I look forward to seeing you in the classroom. Thanks so much.