75 Hard Challenge: The Official Rules, 75 Soft and the Risks

75 Hard is a 75-day challenge created by Andy Frisella in which you do five things every day: follow a diet with no alcohol and no cheat meals, complete two 45-minute workouts (one outdoors), drink a gallon of water, read 10 pages of nonfiction and take a progress picture. If you miss any of them, you start again at day 1. Frisella sells it as a mental toughness program, not a fitness plan.

The official 75 Hard rules

These come from Frisella's own page, not from the TikTok versions, which often change details (Frisella, 2021). Every day for 75 days:

1. Follow a diet. You pick it (keto, paleo, vegetarian, whatever fits your goal), but there is zero alcohol and no cheat meals.
2. Do two workouts of at least 45 minutes. They have to be three hours apart and one has to be outdoors, whatever the weather. Any type counts: running, lifting, walking, yoga.
3. Drink a gallon of water. That's about 3.8 liters.
4. Read 10 pages. Nonfiction meant to improve some area of your life. Audiobooks don't count.
5. Take a progress picture.

The rule that holds it together: if you fail any task, at any point, you start over at day 1. No substitutions, no modifications. Frisella's info page also tells you to check with your doctor before starting and says plainly that it is "not a physical challenge" (75 HARD info).

75 Hard vs 75 Soft

75 Soft isn't Frisella's. It's a community version that spread on social media, and its rules vary from source to source. The most common version is the one Cleveland Clinic describes (Cleveland Clinic, 2023).

If 75 Hard sounds like too much, 75 Soft is closer to what most training plans look like. Other versions add meditation or only ask for four workouts a week, so decide your rules before day 1 and write them down.

What 75 Hard gets right

I couldn't find any published study that tested 75 Hard as a program, so claims about results are anecdotes. Still, a few parts of the design make sense:

• The rules are decided in advance, so you don't negotiate with yourself every morning about whether to train.
• It's daily and short-term: 75 days is long enough to feel like a project and short enough to picture the finish.
• It covers more than the gym. Reading, water and a break from alcohol come along with the workouts.
• The outdoor session gets you walking or running in daylight, which many gym-only routines skip.

The problems come from how strict each rule is.

The risks

Two workouts a day, every day, with no rest

Two 45-minute sessions are 90 minutes a day, or 630 minutes a week. The US Physical Activity Guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week plus muscle strengthening on two or more days (Piercy et al., 2018). 75 Hard asks for more than double the upper end, with no rest day for 75 days.

For someone who already trains, that can be fine if one session is easy. For a beginner who turns both sessions into hard workouts, it's a quick route to sore joints, poor sleep and a stalled lift. The practical fix: make the outdoor session a walk most days and keep hard lifting to three or four days a week.

The gallon of water

A gallon is a lot more than most people drink, and the rule makes you finish it even when you aren't thirsty. The international consensus on exercise-associated hyponatremia (low blood sodium) names drinking beyond thirst as the main cause and recommends drinking to thirst instead (Hew-Butler et al., 2015). Most healthy people who spread 3.8 liters across the day won't have a problem, but don't chug it at night to hit the number, and get medical help for a headache, nausea or confusion after drinking a lot. If you have kidney or heart problems, ask your doctor before adopting any water target. The water intake calculator gives a more personal starting point.

A strict diet with no cheat meals

75 Hard doesn't set calories, so the risk depends on the diet you choose. A very low-calorie plan plus two workouts a day is a hard combination to sustain. The all-or-nothing approach matters too: in a study of non-obese women, rigid dieting was linked to more eating disorder symptoms and flexible dieting was not (Stewart et al., 2002). That study shows an association, not cause and effect, but if you have a history of disordered eating, skip the no-exceptions rule. For anything extreme (long fasts, very low calories, cutting out whole food groups), talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian first.

Restarting from day 1

This is the rule most people quit over. In the main study on how habits form, missing one opportunity to do the behavior did not materially affect how the habit developed (Lally et al., 2010). One missed day doesn't erase the progress of the previous 40. A Cleveland Clinic psychologist puts it this way: for beginners, starting over makes it "very difficult to find the motivation to keep going" (Cleveland Clinic, 2023).

Who should adapt it

• Beginners. Start with 75 Soft or with one workout a day and build up.
• Anyone with an injury, a heart or kidney condition, or who is pregnant. Get a doctor's OK first, as Frisella's own page advises.
• Anyone with a history of eating disorders. Leave out the strict diet rule entirely.
• People who want to build strength or muscle. Two hard sessions a day eats into recovery. Lift once and keep the second session easy.
• Shift workers and parents. Three hours between workouts plus a gallon of water may not fit your day. A plan you can keep for 75 days beats one you drop on day 12.

A saner version you can keep for 75 days

Example only, adjust it to your schedule:

The lifting is where the progress happens, so treat it as a plan rather than 45 minutes of whatever. Add reps or weight a little at a time (what progressive overload is), and keep weekly volume reasonable with the weekly sets calculator.

How to track it

You need two things: a log for the workouts and a checklist for the rest.

For the workouts, write down every set: weight, reps and how hard it felt. After 75 days that log shows whether you got stronger, which the progress photos alone won't. A notebook works, or any app from our workout tracker comparison.

Train with a plan for all 75 days

Take a short test and scan your body, and RepZet builds a routine that's 100% personalized to you. Log each set like you're texting a friend, and it tells you what to lift next time.

Get

For the daily checklist (pages read, water, the walk), a paper grid on the fridge is enough. If you'd rather have it on your phone, LockTy has daily goals for reading, water, workouts and steps from Apple Health, and keeps the apps you pick locked until you've done them.

If what you really want from 75 Hard is fewer distractions and a few daily non-negotiables, read our guide to monk mode. And if you're curious how long a new routine takes to stick, try the habit formation calculator.