Surf Immersion (Surf Torture)
Surf immersion is the BUD/S beach evolution in which a class works in the surf zone, and surf torture is its informal name. Naval Special Warfare Center's own captions use surf immersion and surf passage for the two versions of it.
Two Names, Two Evolutions
The center's captions distinguish them. Surf immersion is the class in the water, exercising as the surf moves through them. Surf passage runs the other way: boat crews working their inflatable boats out through the surf zone and back, photographed by the Navy with a boat held over a crew's heads. Both appear throughout First Phase, and both are part of Hell Week, where the class is wet for days at a time.
What the Cold Costs
The Navy's 2023 command investigation into BUD/S Class 352 lists cold injuries and hypothermia among the hazards its Hell Week evolution risk assessments named, next to dehydration, hypoxia, drowning and fatigue. The same document describes Hell Week as continuous physical effort and training in harsh environments, under a risk-management structure with medical cover. Cold, wet and sandy is the design of the week rather than an accident of scheduling.
How a Candidate Gets Ready for It
No preparation plan makes a first cold swim pleasant, but the shock is trainable. Open water swims, or pool work both with and without a wetsuit, shorten the adjustment period, and the plan's swim volume keeps the aerobic base moving underneath it. The candidates who struggle most in the surf zone are the ones meeting cold water for the first time at the schoolhouse.
Get in cold water before you ship, on purpose, more than once. The tenth cold swim is a task; the first one is an event.
Related Terms
Hell Week is the fourth week of First Phase at BUD/S, the five-and-a-half-day stretch the Navy calls the course's crucible event. A class goes into it after three weeks of increasingly hard physical evolutions and comes out of it either still in the class or gone from the pipeline.
First Phase is the seven-week opening block of BUD/S, the phase that selects and prepares candidates physically and psychologically for the rest of the pipeline. It holds Hell Week, and it is where most of a BUD/S class is lost.
The Long Slow Distance swim is the Thursday cardio session in the 26-week NSW preparation program. It is a continuous swim at a low to moderate intensity, and its distance grows by 100 yards every week, from 1,000 yards in week 1 to 3,500 yards in week 26.
The combat sidestroke (CSS) is a hybrid swimming technique developed for military applications that combines elements of sidestroke, freestyle, and breaststroke. It is the preferred stroke for the PST 500-yard swim and the primary swimming technique used throughout BUD/S training and NSW operations.
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