It’s Round 2 of my Hard-Ish 75! Ding Ding! Variation of the 75 Hard Challenge…
One of the most controversial blog posts that I’ve ever written is about the 75 Hard – a 75 day challenge where you have to follow a strict series of rules. All well and good, but I believe there’s room for variation of the 75 hard.
Despite me saying I was doing a variation of the 75 hard, a lot of people went and got themselves all upset. I explained that I was doing my version of the challenge because I felt the stated tasks weren’t especially relevant to my life, but it seems I’d broken some religious oath and a lot of keyboard warriors took time out of their day to call me a pussy, which I find hilarious! (Seriously, check out the comments on the blog post!)
Anyway, it’s round two of MY 75 Hard challenge. Yes, it’s another variation of the 75 Hard. It’s important to emphasise the MY because despite it being MY version to suit ME and MY goals, it wasn’t clear last time to a lot of people who read my post. So let’s make it clear again. This is MY 75 hard. A variation of the 75 hard.
This time I’ve set up a mini accountability group. My personal training client Rick and one of my blog readers, Jodi who reached out having read the original blog post. Together we’re going to help each other stay accountable and to work our way through the challenge. We’ve all set our own goals for the duration of the challenge – personal to each of us.
Why re-do my 75 Hard?
Simple really – lockdown has been up and down for us all, and whilst I’ve still trained, I feel like I’ve been going through the motions. I’ve had to close my gym twice, I’m doing a lot of copywriting, so am sitting down more. I’m less active overall, My eating habits are all over the place and generally, I could be doing better by myself. I wanted to change all of that, and the best way I know how is focussed bursts of hard effort.
It’s worked for me before – here are a couple of the other challenges I’ve undertaken and the results of them both…
The goals I’ve set myself for the next 75 days are as follows…
- Train every day for 75 days. No days off
- Take my supplements of a multivitamin and vitamin D3 every day
- Read at least 10 pages every night
- Drink 2 litres of water per day (I’ll also drink other things, but that’s my water target)
- Walk 10,000 steps per day
To supplement these I’ve got a couple of weekly targets…
- Do a full stretching session that is at least 30 minutes long
- Write a blog post on how the week has gone
What am I hoping to achieve from my variation of the 75 hard?
The most important outcome for me is a renewal of good habits – more structure to my training, more general activity in my daily life and more focus on doing nourishing things physically and mentally. The 10k steps daily will force me into walking more, which will give a chance to listen to podcasts again. I’ve been reading a lot anyway, but the 10 pages per night will give me extra reason to churn through the books!
As part of the challenge I’m going to exercise more dietary discipline, especially around carbohydrates. I haven’t made it a goal though, because we’re currently without a proper kitchen as our house is being extended!
Weekly goals on the 75 Hard
The weekly goals are as integral as the daily goals, because last time I didn’t make the time to update the weekly diary. I’m going to make sure that’s the case this time – I’ve neglected my fitness blog for far too long, writing more for other people than myself!
Writing fitness copy for others will remain important, after all it’s a significant proportion of my income, but the weekly 75 hard diary will be maintained. I want to share lessons learned from the challenge, otherwise there’s no point in publicising that I’m doing it in the first place!
Our challenge is due to end on Saturday April 24th. I hope I’ll be fitter, stronger and wiser by then! If you want to join in on the challenge, send a message to me and I’ll make sure I add you to the group.
If you want to see more of what I’m doing on the challenge, follow me on Instagram here… Hoyles Fitness Instagram.
One final thing on a variation of the 75 hard…
This is YOUR life. You set your challenge to your rules. You don’t have to justify how or why you’re varying a challenge. A recipe for a cake can be tweaked, you can take a different route to a destination. Think of this in the same way. Just go ahead and make yourself better.
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