Sports
Local Lifeguards Paddle in Training
Los Angeles County lifeguards include paddleboards in their workouts at the Hermosa Beach pier.
Paddleboard-wielding and bikini and board-short-toting athletes were a part of the Los Angeles County lifeguard training Thursday on the south side of the Hermosa Beach pier.
Both local and visiting lifeguards participated in this paddleboard workout aimed to increase motivation, strength and build camaraderie across the ranks, from junior lifeguards to career lifeguards.
"The best part is meeting new and younger junior lifeguards and just seeing them get fired up on being in the water and enjoying the surf and paddleboarding," said Micah Carlson, a Los Angeles County lifeguard.
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Carlson and fellow lifeguard Mike Murphy started the weekly paddleboard workouts, which serve as both a competitive endeavor and a practical measure of the lifeguards' rescue skills, Murphy said.
Murphy noted that the paddleboards and techniques used were actually practiced as a semiprofessional sport in Australia. Many of the 10-foot-long boards were Australian-made, costing upward of $2,000.
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The lifeguards kicked off the workout with a run from the pier to Herondo Street, followed by a paddle past the end of the pier and then back to shore.
"Unfortunately, there's a lot of lifeguards that are great swimmers, great runners and great athletes, but don't spend much time actually on boards," Carlson said. "Even for me growing up it was really easy to duck dive on a 6-foot long surfboard, but kind of challenging to get through the surf on something bigger than that."
Paddleboards are made smaller to ease moving in and out of a surf zone. "You can go through the surf and you won't break them," said participant Chelsea Mitchell, a special education teacher dating one of the lifeguards.
The paddleboards' overall lower volume and shorter length was a factor in the workout. Such ease allowed the lifeguards to focus on rescue techniques in the water.
Additional drills included riding crests, unbroken waves, dismounting properly from the boards, and sprinting from the shoreline to the orange buoys south of the Hermosa Beach Pier.
