If you have been following me for any length of time, you will know that I do love a challenge. Over the years, I have done many challenges, mostly fitness challenges. I have done Project 50 I think three times and then I did 75 Soft once or twice before. Plus, many other little challenges done by trainers and fitness teachers I’ve known over the years.

75 Soft vs 75 Hard

So, you may have seen both 75 Soft and 75 Hard floating around on social media or online. What are they? What are the differences? We are going to break down in this post today. I will go over the rules of both and compare 75 Hard versus 75 Soft.

What is 75 Hard?

75 Hard was a challenge that was created by entrepreneur Andy Frisella. He created this challenge, which he refers to as a “transformative mental toughness program” not just another fitness challenge. The rules for 75 Hard are as follows:

• Follow a diet with no cheat meals and no alcohol.
• Drink one gallon of water per day.
• Do two 45-minute workouts per day every day and one of those must be outside.
• Read 10 pages of non-fiction reading per day, this is mostly focused on personal development books. Atomic Habits by James Clear seems to be the book everyone reads for this challenge. It is a great book; I’ve read it twice.
• Take a progress picture or short form video every single day.

I think a lot of people found this challenge to be kind of very restrictive. The idea too is that if you miss a day, you must go all the way back to Day One and start it all over. There is no room to miss days or skip anything in the challenge.

Since so many people have found it to be very restrictive, a derivative challenge of 75 Hard was created, known as 75 Soft.

What is 75 Soft?

75 Soft was created as a more approachable version of 75 Hard. The rules of 75 Soft are similar but a bit more attainable:

• Eat well and only drink alcohol during social occasions.
• Drink 3 L of water a day but they also recommend a gallon, but they say three liters is kind of like where you need to hit
• Do one 45-minute exercise per day and one day of the week will be an active recovery meaning something easier such as walking or yoga.
• Read 10 pages still but it can be any reading any type of book that you want. They still recommend reading self-help or self-improvement type of content, but you can read anything that you want.
• And it is recommended to not do any progress pictures.

I really can’t do two workouts a day because my schedule is already so packed between work and school. I decided to do another round of 75 Soft.

Conclusion and My Results

For me personally, I find 75 Soft to be a more sustainable challenge. There is room for flexibility in your schedule, what you read, social situations, etc. It takes off some of the pressure people have felt when doing 75 Hard.

I did pretty well sticking to this challenge. Overall, I lost about 12-15 lbs. With a short period of 75 days, you cannot expect a big weight loss or change in your body. If anything, it is a great catalyst for creating healthier habits. Health and Fitness challenges like these are a great way to shake up your routine if you feel stuck in a habit or as if you have hit a plateau in your goals. I was more aware of keeping my workouts consistent and what I was eating.

For more on the challenges and how I tailored it to my own schedule check out the video below. I will be sharing a recap/results video on my YouTube channel soon.