Considering the 75 Hard Challenge? Read This First

Sticking to new habits isn’t easy, especially when they mean giving up old ones that make you feel good—at least temporarily—like binging talking dog videos or inhaling a burger on the way home from work. But there comes a time when making a change in the name of your health and happiness is more attractive than another night spent plastered to your couch. That’s where a program like the 75 Hard Challenge comes in. It’s not a weight-loss app, although followers do tend to shed some pounds. Instead, it’s a “mental toughness” protocol that helps instill new habits in fewer than three months. That’s not to say it’s without flaws.

This challenge is not easy to stick to. People often believe the more intense something is, the better the results. But this is a mistake if you aren’t careful. It’s important to learn about any new routine that overhauls your diet, exercise, and entire life and really evaluate if the pros and cons make it worthwhile. Learn all about 75 Hard, including 75 Hard Challenge rules and what you might stand to gain—or lose—if you try it.

What Is the 75 Hard Challenge?

The 75 Hard Challenge is primarily a mental toughness program with physical and behavioral habits created by entrepreneur and author Andy Frisella in 2019. In short, the challenge aims to build discipline and resilience—physically and mentally—by adopting a set of daily rules that you complete without fail for 75 days straight. Frisella sells a book about the challenge, but you can also learn about it from his podcast and all over the internet.

75 Hard Challenge Rules

There are five 75 Hard rules to follow during the 75 Hard Challenge. Here’s where it gets particularly tough: If you skip any of the items on the 75 Hard checklist on any given day, you need to start over from day one as a practice in forging mental toughness and self-control.

1. Follow a Diet

During the entire challenge, you should stick to a specific meal plan without cheat meals or alcohol. There’s no 75 Hard diet, per se. You get to choose. If you’re hoping to drop body fat, we recommend the best diets for weight loss. But if you’re just trying to adhere to a lifelong habit of healthy eating, stick to the best diets recommended by experts. Something like the Mediterranean Diet is more sustainable for life than, say, the keto or Paleo diet. Get more tips below.

2. Two Daily Workouts

Every day, you have to complete two 45-minute workouts with one being outdoors. Unfortunately, you can’t count activities like mowing the lawn, yard work, or leisure sports into the 75 Hard workout plan like golf, because they’re considered “daily chores” or “routines.” Typically, we don’t recommend two-a-days, especially if you’re not a professional athlete. To ensure you don’t overtrain, keep one akin to an active recovery, like steady-state cycling or yoga. If it starts to diminish your physical and mental well-being, stop.

3. Drink a Gallon of Water

Drink one gallon of water every day. This doesn’t include any other fluid intake, just clear H2O. Hydrating is obviously important. Drinking a gallon is likely unnecessary, but it won’t necessarily hurt you. If it helps up your intake, great. 

4. Read Nonfiction

Part of the mental fortitude aspect of the challenge is reading 10 pages of a nonfiction book each day. Unfortunately, audiobooks don’t count, nor do magazines or sports pages. Sorry—there’s a reason this is called the hard 75 challenge.

5. Take a Daily Progress Picture

Take a photo of your body to track your progress each day. This could be a mirror selfie or one you loop your partner or roommate into taking for you. Just be sure to keep the lighting, location, time of day, and clothing items similar for each shot. For some, this is helpful over time to see incremental progress, however a daily log can be detrimental to others’ self-esteem if their body image isn’t positive. 

75 Hard Diet

Diet just might be the worst four-letter word in the English language. The good news is that you can choose your own diet structure for the 75 Hard Challenge.

Choose a Diet Plan

While you can pick your ideal diet, it has to be one that fosters positive physical change. Whether you’re losing fat, gaining muscle, building strength, boosting your intake of a specific micro or macronutrient (like protein), or improving overall diet quality for skin health, just pick something you think you can stick to for the entire 75 days without falling off the wagon.

Here are some of the best structured diets to consider:

• Mediterranean diet
• DASH diet
• MIND diet
• Mayo Clinic diet
• Flexitarian
• WeightWatchers diet
• Volumetrics diet
• Dr. Weil’s Anti-Inflammatory diet
• TLC diet
• Vegan diet

No Cheat Meals

Can you go 75 days without a hot slice of pizza or a burger? If you want to complete the 75 Hard Challenge, you’ll have to give up all of your normal cheat meals for the duration. That’s right—zero cheat meals (what would Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson say?). Instead, make some healthier swaps that are still tasty but easier on the waistline.

No Alcohol

There’s a strict no-booze rule for the 75 Hard Challenge, so plan accordingly. If you know you’ll be in a high-pressure social situation like a bachelor party or Super Bowl gathering, and you don’t have the willpower of steel, you might want to forego the plan until you know you can stick to it. Might we suggest nonalcoholic drinks like NA spirits, wine, and beer.

75 Hard Workout Plan

If you aren’t currently very physically active or have a difficult time sticking to a consistent routine, this may be a wallop: For the 75 Hard Challenge, you have to do two 45-minute workouts each day, and one of them has to be in the great outdoors. Luckily, the types of workouts you can do are pretty flexible so long as they are physically challenging and aren’t part of your regular daily routine. Here are some examples:

Cardio Workouts

Cardio should be part of your workout routine during 75 Hard, but you don’t have to go hell-for-leather every day. Many of the best cardio workouts can double up as your outdoor workout session.

• Running or jogging
• Cycling
• Swimming
• Power walking
• Rowing
• Hiking
• Jump rope
• Martial arts

Related: The Best Workout Apps for Beginners

Resistance Training

Resistance training is a must for any serious training plan, so pick a style you enjoy or one you’re excited to try and stick to it for 75 days. Be sure to plan out your sessions in advance, increase the challenge as you go, and track your progress.

• Strength training
• Hypertrophy training
• Bodyweight exercises (like pushups, pullups, and squats)
• Powerlifting

Recovery and Flexibility Training

Including some low-key workouts into your routine is the ultimate overtraining prevention strategy. The less fit you are, the more of these sessions you should include—maybe four to five per week counting toward the 45-minute sessions. Scale down from there if you are more fit or as you progress throughout the challenge.

• Yoga
• Pilates
• Mobility work
• Walking
• Stretching

High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

If you plan to include HIIT training, do it sparingly. Too much high-intensity work will burn you out in no time. It’s not possible to do true HIIT training for a full 45 minutes, so if you’re going to add this modality to your routine, stick to 10 to 15 minutes at the end of a cardio session or after resistance training two to three times a week.

Pro tip: Skip high-intensity training altogether if your diet plan includes cutting calories. It’s a recipe for burnout.

• Circuit training
• Tabata workouts
• Sprints

75 Hard Pros

There’s a lot going for the 75 day Hard Challenge. Here are some of the main pros.

Builds Habits

We all know that consistency is king when it comes to results, and that’s the main tenant of 75 Hard: to build and maintain a consistent routine that includes five daily tasks every day without fail. Habits are automatic behaviors triggered by specific cues and learned through repetition, strengthening every time you complete the behavior—think brushing your teeth every night before bed or locking up when you leave the house, according to 2021 research published in Social Psychology.

Good habits help you keep up desirable behaviors over time since you’ll start to automatically perform them without having to rely on conscious motivation—something that’s notoriously fickle, according to the study.

Tracks Progress

Tracking your progress is the best way to see how far you’ve come and it’s also a great way to get a motivational buzz when you start seeing a difference in how you look, feel, and act. Progress tracking with a photo is one of the Hard 75 rules, so it’s built into the routine.

Gets You Active

Obviously, physical activity is a huge part of the challenge and a behavior many people struggle to maintain. If you’re doing 75 Hard, you’ll definitely get your daily movement in through the two 45-minute workouts each day.

Includes Time in Nature

While you don’t explicitly have to go on a nature walk, even cityscape fresh air and sunlight are better than nothing. Since the challenge requires you to complete one 45-minute workout outdoors each day, you’ll get benefits from sunlight exposure (which improves sleep), stress relief, and a brain boost.

Related: The Best Workout Routine Ever, According to Science

75 Hard Cons

Aside from giving up your favorite tasty snacks and foregoing a beer during the game, the 75 Hard Challenge has other practical issues.

Not for Everyone

Although 75 Hard has consistency built in, if you don’t include your own context cues for each habit you want to keep once the challenge is over, you likely won’t stick to it. In other words, if you don’t incorporate the habits into your everyday routine in a way that you’ll stick to once the challenge ends, you’ll probably revert to the same old habits—good or bad—that you were doing before. This is the exact reason why most people regain all the weight they lose during diets.

Easy to Overdo It

Without any actual professional nutritional or fitness guidance (Frisella is not a health expert), you can easily go overboard trying to meet the steep expectations of the challenge. You might not pair the ideal diet with your exercise program—such as a muscle-building calorie surplus with your hypertrophy training—unless you know what you’re doing.

You can accidentally choose habits that do more harm than good if you attempt high-intensity training alongside a low-carb diet or push past your body’s signals for rest in order to get in that second 45-minute workout.

Very Strict

Rigidity is the entire point of the 75 Hard Challenge. In fact, Frisella says in an interview with Megyn Kelly, “The whole point of the program is to put yourself in the most inconvenient, non-compromising situation that you possibly can,” with no room for substitutions.

He goes on to say that giving yourself a break or a “mental day” is a no-go because “letting yourself off the hook is the reason you are where you are in this state of unhappiness and unfulfillment.” If you get sick, sore, or have an emergency—too bad—you’ve failed.

Can Lower Confidence

Battering yourself into submission is not always the best for your mental health and certainly won’t work for everyone. Plus, not everyone who wants to improve their health is unhappy or unfulfilled.

In reality, positive thinking can boost self-confidence by helping you see challenges as temporary and conquerable. Overcoming setbacks and still working toward your health goals is a fast track to becoming more resilient and increases internal motivation and confidence. And for the record, internal motivation is stronger than the kind you’ll get from any challenge.

Related: The Best Workout Routine Ever, According to Science

Final Verdict: What Do Experts Say About the 75 Hard Challenge?

As a personal trainer and nutrition coach, I believe that most people, even those with advanced fitness levels, shouldn’t attempt two workouts every single day. Combining cardio and strength training can interfere with recovery and overall results and is a recipe for burnout. Physically, mentally, and socially, two-a-day workouts can be draining and unsustainable and put you at risk of overtraining, which requires lengthy recovery.

If you’re set on following the two-workouts rule, make sure one is recovery-based—light yoga, walking, or stretching. Organized activities like jiu-jitsu or gym classes can count as one workout, with walking or something gentle for the second. For strength training, limit it to three to five days a week and always pair with recovery exercises.

I don’t recommend avoiding rest days, as even lighter workouts can be mentally exhausting and, on a practical level, can get in the way of other areas of your life, like relationships, work, and family responsibilities. Missing a session and starting over can feel defeating, which I’d never want for my clients. If you miss a workout you had intended to complete, it’s better to reassess and adjust instead of stressing over rigid plans.

In my opinion, the idea that “mental toughness” comes from strict workout rules is absurd. True consistency comes from internal motivation, doing what you enjoy for reasons that matter to you. Building skills in activities you love—whether yoga, strength training, running, or a new sport—will make you proud and boost your confidence in the long term.

Real toughness also means listening to your body. Sometimes, backing off is harder than following a rigid plan. Focus on consistency and finding joy in what you do rather than chasing the next challenge.

Why You Should Trust Us

I’m a certified personal trainer, strength and conditioning specialist, and nutrition coach, among other fancy titles—but my passion is communicating the countless benefits of being active and striving toward a healthier mind and body through attainable action. I use a hefty dose of science to guide the advice I give, along with the real-world experience I’ve gained over the last 15 years. 

Source
Las Vegas News Magazine