75 Hard is a fitness trend that’s burning up social media, which should make you suspicious—whenever a fitness trend takes off online, it’s almost guaranteed to be deeply flawed.
What is 75 Hard?
It’s a fairly simple system to outline and fairly difficult to follow.
I guess I should say that it’s touted not as a “fitness system,” but as a “mental toughness” system.
There are 5 rules, and you have to follow all 5 rules for 75 days.
Let’s go through them individually.
Rule 1: If you miss a task, your day counter starts over.
Miss task 4 on day 60? Start back at day 0. This is a harsh rule, however I think it’s meant to prevent you from skipping any of the challenges, so it’s understandable. It IS called 75 Hard after all, so this rule makes sure it’s 75 and that it’s hard, which covers 100% of the title. Makes sense.
Rule 2: Stick to a diet, no alcohol, no cheat meals.
This one also seems harsh at first, but TBH, because you select a diet for yourself, you can pick something that’s healthy and do-able.
You know what’s funny? Once you’re over, say, 35, going 75 days without booze is something you just do all the time on accident. You just don’t have cause to drink all that often. Probably because you’ve started on the grim descent to death, nothing more to celebrate.
Rule 3: Drink a gallon of water every day.
Drinking a shitload of water is one of those fitness things people tout quite often, but I’m skeptical about the amounts.
For an average person, your classic “8 glasses a day” should be good, which is about half a gallon.
Now, if you’re training, especially in the summer, you probably do need more than you would if you’re just hanging out. Because you’ll be exercising quite a bit (we’ll get there) under 75 Hard, you do need more water than the average person.
Is drinking too much water dangerous?
I mean, if you get extreme and slam a couple hundred ounces all at once, sure. There have been a few cases where runners, usually marathoners, over-hydrate and are killed by it. What happens is, your blood has too much water, not enough salt, and that fucks you up.
But if you drink a small amount of something with salts in it, like Gatorade or what have you, you’ll be fine.
Any expert will tell you that most “hydration plans” overthink it, and the best rule is: if you’re thirsty, drink. If you’re not, don’t. Maybe up your water game if you’re doing long bouts of exercise, when it’s hot, when you’re at altitude, and so on, but you probably don’t need to drink a gallon of water every day.
But, if I’m thirsty, doesn’t that mean it’s already too late?
According to Gatorade advertising slogans, yes, that’s true.
I guess you could choose to assume that all of human evolution has resulted in a system where your body indicates thirst AFTER it’s too late to do anything about it. OR, you could assume, as I do, that some idiot at Gatorade came up with that slogan, it sounds pretty good, so why not go for it?
Rule 4: work out twice a day, 45 minutes each workout, and one must be outdoors.
This is where I think 75 Hard has a problem.
90 minutes of exercise every day, for someone who doesn’t exercise at all, is going to be a killer. We’ll circle back to this in a moment, but suffice to say for now, I think this amount of exercise is a lot for someone who exercises regularly, and it’s probably a bad idea if you’re starting from scratch.
Rule 5: read 10 pages per day of a non-fiction, personal development book, must be a physical book, not on a phone or tablet.
As a librarian, I think 10 pages a day is awesome. But 10 pages a day of Moby Dick will serve you better than 10 pages a day of some personal development horseshit. I can dig the not reading on a phone or tablet, but I think a dedicated ereader (something that’s not able to check your email) is okay. I also think audiobooks are fine.
Everything Everywhere All At Once
I’m going to break down the two things that stick out at me about 75 Hard.
The first one is, like a lot of programs, it seeks to solve all of your problems all at the same time, which is almost destined to fail.
If you go to AA meetings, you’ll see people smoking and chugging coffee. And it’s certainly true that people will replace one addiction with another. But here’s the thing: if you’re an alcoholic, you need to stop drinking. If that means you do other bad things in the course of it, eh, cross that bridge later. Let’s make sure you’re not going to die in a drunk driving accident first, then we’ll deal with your coffee ulcers.
I’m a bigger fan, when it comes to fitness, of addressing one thing at a time. If you aren’t exercising at all, not even light exercise, walking a few times a week, then let’s start there. I’m not really interested in correcting your diet, and it’s similar to the thing that happens in AA. Let’s correct the thing that’s causing you the most trouble first, and then, when and if we’ve got that under control, we can talk about changing something else. OR, you might find that your new commitment to fitness has you eating better on your own (that’s kind of the secret: if you have to run when you get home, a Wendy’s lunch is a lot less appealing).
I get it, people want results, and results come from doing everything. Speaking of results…
You Didn’t Follow The Rules
One of the easiest ways to assert a program is good is to make it very, very difficult to follow. That way, when people fuck it up, they aren’t seeing results because they didn’t follow the program to a T.
You didn’t feel loads better after 75 days? But wait…you didn’t drink water on day 36? What did you think was going to happen? You can’t deviate from the program!
It’s one thing if you’re following a fairly simple program and not doing part of it because you just don’t feel like it. If you’re training to be a powerlifter, and if you’re not eating more than you were as someone training to be a distance runner, it’s not going to work out for you. But failing to eat a lot on ONE DAY shouldn’t destroy your last two months of progress.
I’m going to make this fairly simple: If a program is really complicated, it’s almost always in service of excusing the program for not working.
75 Hard isn’t complicated, but it’s deceptively simple. It SOUNDS so simple, which means if you fail to finish, you’ll blame yourself. You KNEW how it was supposed to be done, YOU fucked it up.
Sustainability
This is a word you’ll hear a lot from me.
The fitness plan that’s best for you is the one you can do.
75 Hard is not super do-able, and I don’t think it’s meant to be.
If you’re looking for a kickstart, 75 Hard might do that, but I think you’re sprinting towards a cliff. At day 76…what then?
NO cheat meals for the rest of your life? No champagne at a wedding? Are you planning to never be sick a day in your life?
The main appeal of 75 Hard, that it’s hard, is probably away of obscuring its main drawback.
If a fitness plan is too hard to sustain, but it’s marketed as being hard, then people quitting before the end is spun into a positive. This is all a part of…
The HARDcore
75 Hard definitely strikes me as the sort of hardcore version of fitness, sort of like how people got the idea to do a 5K, add some obstacles, and call it a Spartan Race or something.
I don’t think this is bad. We can have both. We can have color runs where people throw colored cocaine all over themselves (I assume that’s cocaine, I really don’t know what the powder is. Do you?). And we can have spartan runs, too.
Hardcore fitness is good for people who speak that language, people who want to hit the gym and get pumped up with a playlist or whatever. And those people exist.
That said, don’t feel like a loser if that’s not for you. Hardcore fitness isn’t for everyone, and other versions of fitness are not lesser-than. There’s some dude out there deadlifting a car while he listens to TSwift, guaranteed, and there’s some other dude who is jogging slow as fuck for hours while listening to Norwegian death metal.
The Good
I can see 75 Hard working for people who are already into fitness a bit and want to try a new challenge. If you’re already working out most days, if health is a part of your life, I certainly wouldn’t tell you NOT to do 75 Hard.
I can also see it about having an element of time management. The things you have to cut out to do 75 Hard, doomscrolling, screwing around on social media, etc., will benefit you, and I think most people can find time in their day to do two 45 minute workouts, and I think most people can manage to get outside 45 minutes per day.
Getting outside 45 minutes per day is a good idea, too.
Reading is a nice touch, IMO. After you’ve finished the program, you’d probably finish 2 books, about a book per month, and that’s a good thing for just about everyone.
The Bad
I think two 45 minute workouts per day, every day, is too much, and it’s the big beef I have with the program.
Now, if we count things like yoga, which aren’t hard on the body, as workouts, okay, I can see it (don’t tell me about how achieving this or that pose is really difficult, okay? We can talk about that another time, but let’s just agree that yoga, as done by most people, is not the wear and tear of a 45-minute run).
It’s possible the book provides more guidance, and there’s a system something like “Day 1: 45 minute jog, 45 minute yoga. Day 2: 45 minute walk, 45 minute yoga.” That would probably be appropriate, but two 45-minute, hard workouts in one day is something that should be done only by people who are pretty fit, and even then, 75 days in a row with no breaks is just not something I would recommend, even for an elite athlete.
Recovery is super important, especially as you age out of your 20’s. I don’t think a 75-day stretch is a great plan, and it’s a TERRIBLE idea if you’re totally out of shape.
Should You Try 75 Hard?
There’s basically one good reason to do it: because you want to do 75 Hard.
In other words, if you have general fitness/life goals, 75 Hard might not be the best way to get there. But if you’re looking for a challenge of some kind, and 75 Hard sounds like it’s at your level, I say go for it. We all need a challenge now and then, a race or a weightlifting meet we sign up for, just to stay motivated and give us an endpoint of sorts. I think 75 Hard could be that for a lot of people.
Do 75 Hard because you want to do 75 Hard, not because you want to get in shape, in general. Make sense?
75 Medium
If you’re a starter-out-er and thinking about 75 Hard, here’s what I would suggest as an alternative:
Try for a week instead of 75 days. A week of good habits will help you out, and it’s EXTREMELY do-able.
Diet: Because you’re going to work out more, I’m going to encourage you to leave your diet alone for now UNLESS you’re undereating. I’m a big believer that one of the things people mistakenly do is restricting their calories at the same time they start working out, burning the candle at both ends. And, who would’ve thought, now you have no energy, and working out is miserable. If your diet is decent, leave it alone. If your diet is horrible, okay, look to improve it, but don’t cut calories. You can eat MORE calories, just try and get them from better foods, dig?
Instead of telling you to drink a gallon of water per day, I’m going to suggest that you drink a glass of water whenever you’re looking to drink a non-water beverage. Coffee, soda, tea, whatever, before you reach for that drink, put down a glass of water first, see if you still crave it.
Two 45 minute workouts per day is too much. Instead, try and get in 45 minutes of activity per day. Now, this doesn’t have to be a 45-minute training session every day. It can be a walk. It can be gardening. It can be just basically moving around for 45 minutes every day. And, if you do jog or something like that, the following day’s 45 minutes should be fairly easy. I will encourage you to do at least half of your activities outside, and 100% of your activities away from your smartphone or computer.
As far as reading, yes, 100%. BUT, I’m not as draconian about it, which might surprise you because I am a former librarian. But I don’t believe in the idea of restricting to non-fiction, and I think audiobooks count. If you want to listen to an audiobook while you walk today, get both things in at once, I think you’re being smart. JUST REMEMBER: if you’re listening to an audiobook on your phone, NO looking at emails or texts or other shit. That’s the one thing we need to be hardcore about: your exercise time is not time to catch up on communication.