By @garage_built_matt
Thursday 29th of July, I hit 11 days straight of 75 Hard, Andy Frisella's mind-set challenge.
This is the furthest I've made it so far over the course of 4 attempts. Adding this onto a pretty hectic schedule has made it tougher than I expected to get through. The 'always something' excuse. Well, it sounds like I failed 4 times, and you'd be right, but every day's a school day, so I'm learning along the way as well!
For those who haven't come across Andy Frisella yet, if you're looking for entrepreneurial/motivational content, I can highly recommend what he is doing right now.
He's a hyped up, take no prisoners, extremely driven guy. He's the CEO of Supplement Superstores and 1st Phorm amongst other companies, turning over 100 million plus. He says f**k and p**sy a lot, so if that sort of thing gets your pants in a knot, better to give it a miss. He's fed up with the politically correct, don't keep score for kids, please don't tell anyone the truth you might hurt their feelings, philosophy that is creeping across society today. If it sounds up your street, or like you need a dose of it and a side helping of a rocket up your arse, check him out on Spotify, iTunes or here https://andyfrisella.com/ at his website. In my opinion, he's doing great things, firing me up and to be honest, I don't lack motivation.
The concept behind 75 hard is explained in detail in his podcast here, if you want a quick summary, jump to the next paragraph:
It's about an hour long but it tells everything you need to know.
The aim of the program is to give you back control of your life. If you feel like you're not making progress towards your goals, or you lack focus, this will help no end. I haven't made it more than 11 days through, but it's already highlighting where I can improve with regards to being productive and how to do that. The tasks seem quite simple at first glance, but consistently putting them together around the rest of daily life is the major part of the challenge.
Andy explains in the podcast 'It's not the doing 'it' that's hard, it's convincing yourself to do it that's hard'. So the tasks themselves are straight forward, but consistently making yourself do the work and clicking them off day after day is the very difficult. Training when you don't want to. Eating another meal on your diet instead of going out. Reading 10 pages when it's already mid-night. Strapping your vest on and walking round the block at 1am.
It's a mental toughness skills development program, not a dedicated fitness program.
You do train (or at least get some movement in) twice everyday so you will see physical changes for sure. You can't stick to a diet and train twice a day and not have this happen, but it's not the main objective.
I'll admit that when I heard what the tasks were, I thought it would be challenging but not a major issue to complete. I thought I might slip up once, but I'd get through on the second attempt. Well....that hasn't happened. I've trained for competitions before, I've used diets to make weight to fight, I've pushed through training sessions when I didn't want to, I've run ultra-marathons etc. etc. so I thought I would cruise it. Difficult but manageable. Nope. Not day in day out, when the rest of life is giving you a nudge as well.
The tasks are below:
For 75 days straight -
Train for a minimum of 45 minutes inside
Train for a minimum of 45 minutes outside (both sessions can be outside)
Follow a diet
No alcohol or cheat meals
Take a progress picture
Drink 1 US gallon of water (3.8 litres UK)
10 pages of reading
If you miss a point on any day, start again from day 1.
This is a huge motivator to get out when you don't want to!
This all sounds pretty straight forwards and if you aren't doing anything else, it could be manageable. If you're busy anyway, fitting this alongside everything else is complex. So you either drop some things, or get organised.
My attempts have played out as follows:
Attempt 1 - 30/06 - 01/07 - Made it to day #2 - didn't train twice.
Attempt 2 - 02/07 - 12/07 - Made it to day #10 - forgot progress picture.
Attempt 3 - 13/07 - 18/07 - Made it to day #6 - didn't train twice.
Attempt 4 - 19/07 - 29/07 - Made it to day #11 - didn't train or drink enough water.
In total, I've completed 29 non-consecutive days of 75 Hard. During those days I've already noticed a major increase in my ability to focus and concentrate on any given task. This was one of the key things I wanted to improve when I started. It's paying off. I think it's a combination of having a clear list of objectives to achieve for the day, plus the need to structure other tasks to fit in with those. Now there's no option to switch off and relax for a bit, watch a YouTube video or go on Instagram for a browse, it's take action and go all in or you're going to fail.
Even though I had to start 75 Hard again, the process of hitting the rest of the days led to a month or productivity I haven't experienced in sometime.
It pushed me to work out a straightforward system for a 'to do' list, it's very simple, but it allows me to easily track what I need to do. I'm just using an A4 notebook for day to day tasks, one side of the page for work tasks and one side for personal tasks. It's as easy as it sounds, as I go through the day I mark off the tasks completed and if I need to add more as the day progresses. I add the 75 hard tasks in a side bar. If I have too many main tasks, I lose focus. At the end of the day, I review everything and pass them to the next day, reprioritising as required.
Although it's clear that objectively I'm 'failing', subjectively I'm learning a massive amount about what it's going to take for me to complete the challenge and make progress with the various projects I have going on right now.
From the 4 fails (so far) I have the following observations:
- Train for 45 minutes inside - considering I have a Garage Gym ready to use, it's surprising that this is causing me the biggest issue. Even though I normally train regularly (4 times a week) my usual schedule can move to one day or another, depending on what I have going on. This flexibility isn't available with 75 Hard as the aim is to train twice every day for 45 minutes, so you need to put aside an hour and half minimum for this.
For me the indoor session is strength training (both sessions can be outdoor, but must be separate, to make them inconvenient!) and the end of the story is I need to do this in the morning, then save the 'cardio' for the evening when the mental effort required is lower. The strength training is a get up and do it job, which becomes complicated when you start the day early and have been out until 2am the day before, because you started your second 45 minutes late, but don't want to go back to day 1... this isn't the idea, so it needs discipline applying to it.
To make the strength training as simple as possible, I'm using 531 Forever templates that I set up two cycles (six weeks) in advance in Microsoft Excel (get 531 here https://jimwendler.com/), so I just fire up the laptop and the training is ready to go. I don't have to think about what I need to do, but I do set everything up the night before, so I can get up, eat and train in as short a time as possible. Then that's the main hurdle out of the way. If I get that done, I'm good for everything else.
During training I listen to podcasts in the background, not music to take advantage of the time. I don't need music to train.
- Train for 45 minutes outside - I've set this up as a standard piece of steady state cardio work. I walk with a 10kg weight vest for 45 minutes, which is approx. 4km. I'm trying to increase the pace with this. The cool thing is, although I am already relatively lean, including this piece of simple training has let me drop fat without a noticeable impact on recovery. It also gives me 45 minutes to listen to podcasts (I am working through the MFCEO at the moment). This is the easiest task for me. I can do it late in the evening (or first thing in the morning) without needing to get fired up. I just throw the vest on and walk. As I've been doing this for 29 days now, the vest is feeling light, so I am going to swap some of the days for a run, MTB or hill sprints to introduce some variety. We're looking into a big weighted vest test for GBA so this will be a part of that work and we're designing some vest plates to slot in too.
- Follow a diet - this isn't not causing a big problem (F**k you then, I hear you shout) I fully understand the benefits of keeping food in check and have been on top of this for a few years, so this is ok for me. I don't want to take 2 steps forward with training to go one step back via diet, so this is getting dealt with. I'm using the vertical diet by Stan Efferding (https://stanefferding.com), it's easy to follow, it makes sense, it's easy on my stomach and I haven't missed a day since the 29th of June. I've tightened up my general habits a bit, but it's not causing me a lot of pain. I don't keep any food in the house that I shouldn't eat; this creates an environment that enables me to comply with this part. For some people this is going to be the biggest problem, but if you take away the source of the issue, it's much less likely to happen. If you REALLY struggle, give 75 Hard a miss for now and take it away bit by bit. Using a diet that is easy to follow is a big help, anything that is complex, or takes a lot of time, is going to cause problems. Get out of your own way on this one.
- No alcohol / cheat meals - as above, I don't have any 'bad' food at home, so it takes away the option to fail at this. I'm not a big restaurant eater (especially with Corona all over the place), so going out isn't causing me an issue here. Luckily I also don't drink much, if at all (boring b**tard!) and have no friends ; ) , I prefer to train, get out on my mountain bike/mx bike or work on other projects, rather than suffer through the day with a hangover. I also find that now I'm an old goat, even one beer makes me feel rough as a badgers a**e for days, so (luckily) it's pretty easy for me to stay away from it. I don't have alcohol in the house; this is a key point in getting out of my own way (I like a beer, so I'll probably have a couple when/if this is ever over...).
- Take a progress picture - this is straight forward, although you can forget (I did) especially if one day starts merging into the next when you end up doing your second 45 minutes training at 1 a.m. I take a picture after I've finished training in the morning, before I jump in the shower. You don't have to post the picture anywhere as part of the challenge, it's for you (post it if you like...you'll see some serious changes if you're really completing each task).
- Drink 1 US Gallon of water - this is pretty tough. It's a lot of water which equals a lot of time in the bathroom. I get through it via 3 large cups of green tea during the day at approx. 500ml each, plus 500ml during training and the remaining 1.8l as straight water. This is a lot of liquid, so beware...there aren't really any tricks here, just remember to keep drinking. Maybe you could mark your cups with the quantity, or measure everything out at the start of the day to make sure they know how much they need to drink.
- 10 pages of reading - for me, this is by far the best part of this challenge. AF is a big believer in reading for personal growth (so am I). I love to read and use my time to learn new topics/skills. With respect to the challenge, unfortunately, I end up reading way more than 10 pages, so this means cutting into time for other things, but it's a big positive.
Over the 29 days I've been on 75 Hard I've read three books! Two of them I've been attempting to read for years and one I hadn't even got around to starting. For me this is an awesome change in my daily routing that I will continue indefinitely.
I have a few more days to go yet though, so I'll get through some more. The next one I have lined up is 'Thinking, Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman...A key point about this part of the challenge is you have to read a physical book, not an e-book, kindle or website, but a book made of squashed trees! This is requires a little more time than just sitting scrolling on your phone, and fits into the concept of the tasks being inconvenient.
Garage Built 75 Hard
To make things for myself, I've also added the following to create 'Garage Built' 75 Hard. The core remains as above, plus:
- Meditation - minimum of ten minutes. Prior to 75 Hard I used the well-known 'HeadSpace' app. I found this a brilliant help in calming down mental chatter, those back and forward loops that pop up. After about a year of using it daily I was having problems with the sessions running all the way through and dropping out, plus the app was pretty buggy, despite being expensive. In the end it was actually adding stress by using it, so I knocked the subscription on the head. Now I use a mix of 'Smiling Mind', a free Australian meditation app, plus just setting timer for 5 minutes and aiming to count my breaths up to ten, before starting again at zero. This has helped me no end with focus and creativity; it makes a huge difference when you commit to it.
- Cold shower - it sounds stupid, but I don't like getting in cold water (swimming pool, sea etc.) so this has sorted that out! After 29 days of cold showers, this is no problem and is another facet in challenging the mind-set of being comfortable. It's in a further stage of the 75 Hard program, but I'm doing it now anyway.
So, as I go into take #5 of 75 hard, starting today on the 1st of August (sounds like a good place to go again) I've learnt a whole raft of things that I'll apply to make it through this time:
Don't delay actions - as soon as one task slips, the rest slip, just get on with whatever it is.
Strength training has to happen in the morning for me to make this work.
Prepare everything for training the night before.
Weighted vest walk or other outdoor session is fine in the evening. Use this time to listen to a podcast.
Use a diet that is easy to follow and you can prepare multi days in advance. Vertical Diet works for me.
Set a time for your progress picture and make it a habit. Don't slip up here and make this a reason to restart.
Buy a book that you really want to read. It could be about training, a new skill you want to learn, an autobiography of someone you admire. Make it a part of the day you look forward to. I am stoked about this part of the challenge and reading my next book.
Be honest...every time I could have carried on to the next day, but that's not the point. Also, now I'm multi attempts in, I can see that completing the 75 days will be a great challenge, but the idea is to make changes to your habits for life which will allow you to be more successful. This is happening without having completed the challenge, but as a result of trying to be better every day.
Other things:
This may not be for you right now. Honestly, I have a lot going on, so fitting this in is difficult. I'm going again because I appreciate the benefits that having specific tasks and structure gives me. If you struggle a lot with your diet, or you're hit and miss with training in general, it's worth getting those things in check before you start. To give yourself a fighting chance. Having said that, ref. below go for it if you want, as you will learn what works for you along the way. Be aware that you need to be honest with yourself!
I've spoken to a couple of people who said they weren't ready to start, or will start X day. From what I know now, it's not critical to go through this in one hit. It's a great target and I can see why people would want to as a 'badge of honour' but the more I try and the more I fail, the more I learn the point of this. I think everyone will find their own way with this challenge and part of that for me is understanding what is good for me and what isn't. The last couple of times I didn't win a day, I really did have to do something else and I made the choice to do that at the expense of starting this again. In the process it reinforces how critical it is to complete each task efficiently and move on to the next, otherwise you soon run out of day.
There's no mention of sleep, but this is something that AF talks about on his podcasts. In 'Garage Built' 75 Hard - V2, there will be a sleep requirement as this is a driver of performance in all areas of life, from learning new skills, to creativity and 'AHA' moments, to getting stronger and being in a better mood. This is essential to the whole process and although it isn't included it shouldn't be ignored if success is the goal.
So, here we go again. Tuck in behind me if you want to come along for the ride, I'll be updating here as it lets me write more about the process than I can squeeze on to Instagram.
As I pick up any tips, or have any thoughts I'll let you all know. Leave me a comment below if you've got any questions about 75 Hard or have any advice to give, or even if you'd like to poke me with a stick...
With that, I've talked long enough, it's time to train (I didn't do it this morning...start as you don't mean to go on)....LET'S GO!