OK, you're sexist. As a female ex-lifesaver, I agree wholeheartedly with the instructor referenced in the op. There are definately techniques that don't invol

OK, you're sexist. 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.