75 Hard vs 75 Soft (+ 9 Easier Alternatives to 75 Hard)

75 Soft is the best-known alternative to 75 Hard. It keeps the 75 days but asks for one 45-minute workout instead of two, gives you one active recovery day a week, allows alcohol on social occasions, sets 3 liters of water instead of a gallon and, in most versions, doesn't reset you to day 1 when you miss a day.

If 75 Hard sounds like a full-time job but you still want a real 75-day challenge, you have more options: 75 Medium, 45 Soft, Monk Mode and a build-your-own 75 among them. Below: both side by side, 9 alternatives from easiest to hardest, and how to pick yours.

What is 75 Hard (and why is it so hard)?

75 Hard is the original 75-day challenge. Andy Frisella, an entrepreneur and podcaster, launched it in 2019 and calls it a mental toughness program, not a fitness plan: five daily tasks for 75 days, zero exceptions.

These are the 75-day challenge rules, as listed on Frisella's official 75 Hard page:

1. Follow a diet built around your goal, with no cheat meals and no alcohol.
2. Do two 45-minute workouts a day, and make one of them outdoors.
3. Drink a gallon of water (about 3.8 liters), plain and unflavored.
4. Read 10 pages of a nonfiction book. Audiobooks don't count.
5. Take a progress photo every day.

The rule that makes it hard: miss any task, on any day, and you start over at day 1.

The rules aren't complicated. The load is. Two 45-minute workouts add up to 90 minutes of training a day, plus two rounds of changing, showering and often travel.

Reading is the quick part. Adults read nonfiction at about 238 words a minute, the average in Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies, so 10 pages of about 300 words (our assumption) take roughly 13 minutes. Add meal prep, and our rough estimate is 2.5 to 3 hours or more a day.

There's also no rest day, and one slip on day 52 (a sick kid, a late flight) wipes out seven weeks of work.

75 Hard vs 75 Soft: the key differences

75 Soft keeps the 75 days and the daily checklist, but softens almost every rule. Cleveland Clinic describes it as taking the same concepts and making them more accessible and less rigid, and Penn State Health calls it the beginner-friendly version.

The biggest difference isn't the second workout. It's the reset rule: 75 Hard treats one miss as failure, while most 75 Soft versions let you carry on the next morning (some keep a reset on purpose). Decide which before you start, not on the day you slip.

Choose 75 Hard if you already train most days, you can find about three free hours, and you want the all-or-nothing test on purpose. Choose 75 Soft if you want the structure and the full 75 days, without the double workouts, the gallon and the restart.

9 easier alternatives to 75 Hard (from easiest to hardest)

Fitness challenges like 75 Hard, such as 75 Soft, 75 Medium and 45 Soft, keep its daily checklist and soften the rules. Other challenges similar to 75 Hard, like Monk Mode or a Winter Arc, change the goal or the length. This list has both.

The order is our judgment of difficulty (time per day, length, strictness), and the times are our rough estimates.

Build-your-own 75

You pick three or four rules that serve your goal and keep them for 75 days. Cleveland Clinic suggests exactly this: set your own goals, maybe borrowing parts of 75 Hard like drinking more water or eating healthier, at your own pace.

The rules (a starting template):

• One movement rule you can do on your worst day, like a 20-minute walk.
• One food or drink rule, like vegetables at two meals or no alcohol on weeknights.
• One mind rule, like 10 pages or 10 minutes of journaling.
• Optional: one rule that removes something, like no phone in bed.

• Time per day: 20 to 60 minutes, your call.
• Best for: beginners, busy parents and anyone who quit 75 Hard.
• Watch out for: rules too vague to check. Give each a time, a place or a number, and make it easy to start ("make it easy" is the third law in our Atomic Habits cheat sheet).

30-Day Water Challenge

One rule for 30 days: drink a set amount of water every day, spread across the day. A common variation swaps soda or juice for water.

"8 glasses a day" is everywhere, but a 2002 review by Heinz Valtin found no scientific proof that every healthy adult needs it. The National Academies set adequate total water intake at about 3.7 liters a day for men and 2.7 liters for women, counting all drinks and food, and say thirst guides most healthy people well. Our suggestion: a glass when you wake up and one with every meal.

• Time per day: a few minutes.
• Best for: your very first challenge.
• Watch out for: forcing water you don't need. More isn't better (see is 75 Hard safe?).

A 30-day version (30 Hard or a softer 30)

The rules of 75 Hard or 75 Soft, for 30 days instead of 75. Treat it as a dress rehearsal.

The rules: copy every rule of the challenge you're testing, and decide up front whether a miss means a restart.

• Time per day: about 1 hour with soft rules, up to 3 hours with hard ones.
• Best for: finding out whether 75 days fits your calendar before you commit.
• Watch out for: treating day 30 as the finish line. In Phillippa Lally's 2010 study, the median time for a daily habit to feel automatic was 66 days.

45 Soft

The 45 Soft challenge is 75 Soft on a shorter clock: usually the 75 Soft rules, run for 45 days, with no official rulebook.

The rules (most common version): one 45-minute workout a day with one active recovery day a week, eating well with alcohol only on social occasions, 3 liters of water and 10 pages of any book. Rules vary by creator: some swap in an 80/20 eating rule or a daily step goal instead of a set workout.

• Time per day: about 1 hour.
• Best for: a first structured challenge with a nearer finish line.
• Watch out for: dropping everything on day 46. Pick the two rules you'll keep before you start.

75 Soft

The best-known variation: the same 75 days with gentler rules, listed in the comparison table above. The rule that varies most between versions is the missed day: most versions let you carry on, and some keep a reset.

• Time per day: about 1 hour.
• Best for: most people who looked at 75 Hard and thought "almost".
• Watch out for: "eat well" is vague. Define it up front, like vegetables at every meal and sweets only on weekends.

Winter Arc

A social media trend more than a program. You treat the last stretch of the year, usually from October 1, as your "arc": a quiet season of working on yourself before January.

The timing borrows from a real effect. In three studies published in 2014, Hengchen Dai, Katherine Milkman and Jason Riis found that searches for "diet", gym visits and commitment contracts rose after fresh starts like a new week, month or year. October 1 is one of those landmarks, and starting in the fall means your habits are already running when most New Year's resolutions start to wobble.

The rules: three to five of your own. They vary by creator; training, waking up earlier, less social media and reading are the ones we see most often in social posts.

• Time per day: 30 minutes to 2 hours, depending on your rules.
• Best for: a head start on January.
• Watch out for: the holidays. Thanksgiving and December parties land mid-arc, so decide now what counts on those days.

Operation 66

A 66-day challenge built on the idea that habits take about 66 days to form. There's no official rulebook. The rules below are the version online guides describe most often, so treat every number as adjustable.

The rules (a common version):

• One workout of 45 to 60 minutes a day.
• Eat well 90% of the time (the 90/10 rule).
• A glass of water as soon as you wake up.
• 30 to 60 minutes a day on a personal goal.
• Screen-time limits and 10 minutes of stretching or meditation.

• Time per day: about 1.5 to 2 hours.
• Best for: people with a project, like an exam or a side business.
• Watch out for: treating 66 as a promise. It was a median in Lally's study, and individual times ran from 18 to 254 days.

Monk Mode

An alternative that targets focus, not fitness. For a set period you strip out distractions and put the time into one goal. The hours are easy; the social cost is not.

The rules: they're personal and vary by creator. These come up most:

• No social media, or a hard daily limit.
• No alcohol, partying or late nights out.
• Daily deep work, exercise and meditation, and early nights.

• Time per day: varies. The challenge is what you cut, not what you add.
• Best for: people whose real problem is the phone, not the gym. If your bad habits are mostly scrolling, start here.
• Watch out for: isolation. Cutting friends for weeks wears people down. Keep the people, cut the feeds.

75 Medium

Cleveland Clinic notes there's no single official version and describes what most share. It sits last because it runs the full 75 days and is closest in shape to 75 Hard, even if Operation 66 can take as long on a given day.

The rules (most common version):

• One workout of 45 to 60 minutes a day, any activity, anywhere.
• Balanced eating about 90% of the time, limiting alcohol, added sugar and highly processed foods.
• A daily water goal, far less rigid than a gallon.
• 10 to 20 minutes of self-reflection or mindfulness: meditation, journaling, reading or prayer.
• Progress photos optional. Miss a day and you adjust, with no restart.

• Time per day: about 1 to 1.5 hours.
• Best for: fit people who want a real step up without the gallon and the reset.
• Watch out for: drifting back to 75 Hard rules. If you add a second workout, add rest days too.

Which alternative should you choose?

Our pick for most people is 75 Soft or a build-your-own 75. Choose the one that fits your worst week, not your best one.

Then write your version down before you start:

• What counts for each rule (a time, a place or a number)
• The minimum on a bad day
• What happens after a miss

If-then plans help: "after I drop the kids at school, I walk for 20 minutes." In a 2006 meta-analysis of 94 independent tests, Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran found that if-then plans had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals.

Is 75 Hard safe? Who should pick an easier version

For a healthy adult who already trains, 75 Hard can be done, but it has no rest or flexibility built in, and Cleveland Clinic notes there's little scientific evidence behind the approach. Three rules carry most of the risk.

• No rest day. The CDC recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week. 75 Hard asks for 630 minutes, more than four times that, for over ten weeks straight. A 2012 review by Jeffrey Kreher and Jennifer Schwartz describes overtraining syndrome, studied mostly in athletes, as a response to excessive exercise without adequate rest, and 75 Hard has no recovery day.
• A rigid diet. In a 2002 questionnaire study of 188 nonobese women, Tiffany Stewart and colleagues found that rigid dieting, but not flexible dieting, was associated with eating disorder symptoms. And eating disorders can affect anyone, at any weight, says the NIMH.
• A gallon of water. That's more than the National Academies' adequate total water intake for women, 2.7 liters from all drinks and food combined. Cleveland Clinic warns that drinking a lot of water fast can cause water intoxication (hyponatremia, low blood sodium), and some people get symptoms after about a gallon in an hour or two. Spread it across the day: nausea, bloating or a headache mean stop, and confusion or a seizure is a medical emergency.

How to track your challenge and keep the habits after day 75

Put all your rules into one daily routine, in a fixed order, and check them off as you go.

Whichever version you choose, you can add the rules you do at a set time (the workout, the 10 pages, journaling) as habits in a Greatr morning or evening routine, tap Play and run them one at a time. Greatr counts every day you show up, with medals like 30 Day Streak and 66 Habit Days. For Monk Mode, the app lock keeps the apps you choose locked each morning or evening until your routine is done.

After the challenge, keep two rules, not all of them, as your morning or evening routine. Add a new habit only when those run without effort. Our list of good habits examples has ideas for what to add next.

Your next step: tonight, write down your three or four rules, one line each, with the time you'll do them. Day 1 is tomorrow morning.