Lessons from Hell Week

I’ve always been drawn to stories about the human spirit. When confronted with a massive challenge, why do some succeed, but others fail? Sometimes the answers are obvious – this person was younger or smarter or stronger, that person had less natural aptitude to cope. But often the answers are mysterious, leaving one with only questions. In many cases the person who stands undefeated at the end is not the smartest or strongest. The only logical explanation is that the difference must come from within.

In the last year I’ve been on somewhat of a kick reading books about the Navy SEALs. Some are good, some not so good. I’m not fascinated so much about what they do once they become SEALs, but rather about the training to get to that point. It’s the toughest training in the world— about 80% of those that enter SEAL training drop out. I find it fascinating to read about what those 20% endured, and their thought process that allowed them to endure it. I know I would have quit in a heartbeat.

SEAL training is called BUD/S, which stands for Basic Underwater Demolition / SEALs. The complete journey to become a SEAL takes 6 months, and takes place in Coronado, California. BUD/S training is divided into 3 distinct phases. The first phase is basic conditioning, and is 8 weeks long. At the midway point of this 8 week course is the part where most people quit, “Hell week.” What is Hell Week? Here is a short description from the internet:

“This is when students train for 5 days and 5 nights solid with a maximum total of 4 hours of sleep.”

Note that this isn’t 4 hours of sleep every day. This is 4 hours of sleep total.

The description of Hell Week continues:

“Hell week begins at sundown on Sunday and ends at the end of Friday. During this time, trainees face continuous training evolutions.”

What kind of evolutions? Based on the books I read, they consist largely of carrying around zodiacs (rubber boats) and wooden logs over your heads, getting “wet and sandy (diving into the 60 degree surf, then coming out and rolling on the beach until you look like a sand monster), paddling your boat out into the surf, dumping it on command, then getting back into it, over and over and over. There are also timed runs on the beach of up to 4 miles, where the people that finish under a given time limit get a brief rest, and the people that finish slower than that get punished. A particularly cruel “evolution” I read about involved putting trainees into the ocean at about midnight, and requiring them to tread water for 20 minutes. Instructors had calculated that any exposure in the water for greater than 20 minutes would cause hypothermia, so they’d leave them in the water for exactly 20 minutes, take them out, dunk them in tubs of warm water, and then after they’d warmed them up, stick them back out in the ocean again. Four meals are provided each day, to keep hypothermia away, and compensate for the massive amount of calories burned. But the mess hall is a mile away, and they are required to run back and forth to it. When you imagine doing this nonstop for 5 days and nights, with only 4 hours total sleep and occasional short breaks for meals (during which time many people nod off into their food), it’s easy to see why most people quit. They psychologically snap, or decide it just isn’t worth the suffering.

And of course, this is the point. They want to weed out almost everyone, until the only people that are left are remarkable.

I read several books about SEAL training and Hell Week, and it occurred to me that there were many lessons that could be gleaned. About not giving up, perservering in the phase of extreme suffering, and even about how to comport yourself as a human being. I’d like to list a few things that I found really interesting, and that stuck with me.

1) A survivor doesn’t consider quitting to be an option. In his book “Lone Survivor,” Marcus Luttrell recounts his experience of hell week. He writes that so many people cracked, that they decided while shivering endlessly in 60 degree water, teeth chattering, muscles screaming and cramping, that this could not possibly be worth the agony. He said one of the reasons he didn’t quit is the thought simply never occurred to him. He wrote that at the start of hell week he figured he might not make it if he broke a limb, or if he drowned or was otherwise killed, but the thought of actually QUITTING VOLUNTARILY, was not even a possibility to him. He suspected that those who considered it as an option (“I’m going to do my best but if I have to, I can always quit”) almost never made it. Marcus actually did break his leg the first time he attempted hell week, but came back in the next class and passed.

2) Humor helps ease suffering. In his the book “The Warrior Elite,” Dick Couch shadowed a BUD/S class and reported on the trainees in it from the first day (about 160 classmates) to graduation day (about 23 classmates). He recalled two instances of humor during hell week that stuck with me. In the first one, a BUD/S instructor was screaming at a recruit and making him do calisthentics on the beach. The recruit didn’t complain and suffered in silence. Suddenly the instructor ordered him to do duck walks. The recruit started making quacking noises as he walked, and pretty soon both he and the instructor were laughing. In the second instance of humor, the remaining trainees were deep into hell week, on night 3 or 4. The current “evolution” consisted of paddling their zodiacs out through the surface, then turning the boat over in the frigid water when one of the instructors blew his whistle. Then righting it and climbing back in when he blew the whistle a second time. This had been going on relentlessly, and finally when an instructor blew his whistle again, signifying the trainees to dump their boat, a long cry echoed over the waves, “Asshole!” Everyone laughed, even the instructors.

3) You do better if you’re trying to help others, and not just yourself. In his excellent book, “The heart and the fist: the education of a humanitarian, the making of a Navy SEAL,” Eric Greitens writes about his experience in hell week. Unlike Luttrell, who went into SEAL training as a sailor, Greitens was an officer. This meant that during training he was in charge of a small group of fellow trainees. Greitens didn’t feel better than them. He felt responsible for them. This sense of responsibility weighed on him, and he would search his mind at night for ways to help them graduate, to convince them to keep going and not quit. His commanding officer warned him before SEAL training that this would make it harder for him to graduate. Because not only would he have to worry about himself, he would have to worry about the men he was responsible for.

But Greitens said a curious thing. He wrote that he found that being responsible for others, made his enduring EASIER. He said during hell week he wasn’t thinking of his own pain and suffering, he was constantly watching his men, trying to think of ways to help and encourage them. As a result he didn’t have time to think of his own pain. He said the only time during hell week when he wavered was when they were given a 2 hour nap, about halfway through the course. His men immediately passed out in a tent on the beach. He lay down next to them and tried to close his eyes. But he couldn’t fall to sleep. He tried and tried but he was still wide awake. He writes that he remembers getting up and thinking, if I can’t fall to sleep, I am not going to be able to survive the rest of hell week. My career will be ruined! And then he realized that this was the first time he’d felt sorry for himself. And it was all because he had stopped worrying about his men, and started worrying about himself. Once he realized that truth, he immediately felt peaceful, lay down, and fell asleep.

4) The right way to treat others is not necessarily what society would have you believe. Again in Greiten’s book, there is a passage that really brought this home for me. He is describing a training run they went on, along the beach. It wasn’t during hell week, it was just a regular training run led by Instructor Reno, a popular BUD/S instructor that was tough but fair, and that everyone liked. The trainees were running along Coronado beach, and Greitens said they passed a bunch of young women who were lying out on the sand in their bikinis. The men stared at them as they ran by. After they had passed them and gone further down the beach, Instructor Reno said, “You know what a real man is, guys? When a real man leaves a woman’s side, she feels better about herself.” Greitens said that stuck with him, all these years later. It resonates with me, too. It doesn’t only have to reply to romantic relationships, I think it can apply to any relationship between two human beings. Popular culture teaches us that in a relationship you should “get what you want,” and “get what makes you happy,” and be selfish so that “no one takes advantage of you.” There is even a popular saying that says don’t worry about other people, “Just do you.” Instructor Reno’s definition of what makes a real man, is completely different from the way most people think in relationships. Most people just think about getting what they want, and that’s it.

There were a lot of other things I learned in reading about hell week, but those lessons stood out for me. It also made me think about the book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” by Viktor Frankl. In this book, Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, explores the title theme. When he was in the camp, he writes that he watched some people give up and die, while others continued on until the bitter end, refusing to capitulate. He concluded that the difference was not in who was weaker and who was stronger. He writes almost invariably, the people that gave up, gave up because they could no longer see the point in anything. The ones that carried on, did so because they had found some meaning to their survival. Whether the meaning was staying alive for their children, spouse, or a higher belief, this mental attitude made all the difference. I couldn’t help but think of that line from Frankl’s book, when reading about Hell Week.