In October 2021 after some tough times, I decided that I needed to do something different. I was looking to distract myself from my reality and throw myself into something physical to escape from what we were going through.
I came across the 75 hard challenge.
Here’s what you need to do daily:
- Picture of your self
- Drink 1 gallon of water
- Stick to a diet
- Exercise twice a day for 45 min each. One must be outside.
- Read 10 min. a day
- No Alcohol
I’ll save you some time and say, I failed and didn’t make it through 75 days.
But I do feel like it impacted my life and helped me get through what I was going through instead of retreating like I think I would of have. I really threw myself into this lifestyle of moving twice a day.
What Workouts did I do?
Every morning I walked for 45 minutes, which typically ended up being about 2 miles. During this time I played Pokemon Go, and just used an auto catcher to catch pokemon while I listened to music, a podcast or just listened to the sound of my footsteps.
Monday, Wednesday and Saturday I had a HIIT style workout. With a day for upper body, lower body and last one for full body. The strength training days on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday i’d focus on injury prevention, hamstrings and shoulders. Towards the end, I switched it just slightly to start doing some compound lifts. That just left me with Fridays where I would typically do a yoga routine and stretch.
How did I feel?
Honestly the first few days were really tough. Taking on a new routine can be very hard on your body, pair that with not being able to rest early on it just really felt like I was going to quit early on. My wife really pushed me to keep on going, because she knew that it would help me. So even though some workouts I almost puked, I went through and did my two a day workouts.
Where did I fail?
Diet and water. I did what I could, but there were times when I just didn’t eat. When I was hungry, there was so much comfort food or snacks in the way that I didn’t stay consistent. I failed with 10 days left and it was just because I ran out of steam and didn’t plan correctly around the holidays. With 75 hard, if you don’t do one of the 6 tasks in a day, you need to start over.
What did I learn
I learned that i’m stronger and more resilient than I thought I was. At a certain point I was just in a flow state of doing everything I needed to get done. Waking up early brought out who I really was and having this goal of working out every day led me to just suck it up and go do my walk even if it was really cold.
I also learned that sometimes I need a guided plan like this and that I just needed to trust the plan because I didn’t have the mental capacity to come up with one by myself. Having this 75 Hard plan took out the guess work of what I needed to do to get out of bed every day and at the time I really needed that.
Would I do it again?
While I love what it did for me, I won’t actually be starting again from 0. Although I didn’t do two workouts some days, or I didn’t eat clean, I still did about 80% of everything on the list above. I still go workout, I still go for walks but every now and then i’ll enjoy a margarita and a burger on date night. I appreciate everything 75 hard did for me, and I will continue to be a two a day and if I miss one day because i’m traveling or i’m just tired and need to recover i’ll do that.
