75 Hard vs 30 Hard: Rules, Real Differences and Which to Do First

75 Hard is Andy Frisella's official 75-day program. Every day you do two 45-minute workouts (one outdoors), follow a diet with no cheat meals and no alcohol, drink a gallon of water, read 10 pages of a nonfiction book and take a progress photo. Miss any task and you restart at day 1. 30 Hard is an unofficial version that runs the same five tasks for 30 days. Nobody owns it, so the biggest open question is whether a miss sends you back to day 1.

Pick 30 Hard if you have never finished a strict challenge with several daily tasks and want to learn what breaks first at a third of the cost. Pick 75 Hard if you want the program as its creator wrote it. One detail most comparisons miss: Frisella does have an official 30-day version of 75 Hard, but you only reach it after finishing 75 Hard.

The rules below come from Frisella's own pages, read on November 6, 2026. We build a habit app, and it works the same for either choice, so we have no stake in which one you pick.

75 Hard vs 30 Hard at a glance

The task list is the same in 75 Hard, the common 30 Hard and Frisella's official 30-day stage. The differences are the length, who wrote the rules and what a miss costs.

What the 75 Hard rules are

75 Hard is free, and Frisella calls it a mental toughness program, not a fitness challenge. His 75 Hard page and his LIVEHARD article list five daily tasks:

1. Drink a gallon of water, about 3.8 liters. Other drinks are allowed, but they do not replace the water.
2. Read 10 pages of a nonfiction, self-development book.
3. Complete two 45-minute workouts, and one of them must be outdoors.
4. Follow a diet of your choice, with no cheat meals and no alcohol.
5. Take a progress picture.

Miss any task on any day and you start over at day 1. Frisella answers the people who call that harsh on his own page: "You don't accomplish anything great by changing the rules in your favor just to check the box."

He leaves the workouts and the diet up to you. The two workouts, his page says, "could literally be as simple as going for two 45-minute walks." He also explains the length: "I made this program 75 days, because that is how long it will take for you to develop these skills." Keep that sentence in mind for the 30-day question below.

His page also tells everyone to consult a physician before starting, and not to start if a doctor advises against it.

What 30 Hard is, and why it has no rulebook

30 Hard is the 75 Hard task list run for 30 days, and no single person or company owns its rules. You will find it on fitness blogs and in challenge apps, not on Frisella's site.

The most common version keeps everything. The Workout Mag describes it as two 45-minute workouts (one outdoors), a strict diet, a gallon of water, 10 pages of reading and a daily photo for 30 days in a row. It notes that the rule is to restart at day 1 after a miss, "though many participants bend this for the shorter 30-day format." The challenge app Reset75 lists a scaled-down 30 Hard with workouts of your choice and usually no restart.

So before you start, answer three questions that 75 Hard settles for you and 30 Hard does not:

• Does a miss send you back to day 1?
• Are the workouts still two a day at 45 minutes, or scaled down?
• What is your diet, in one sentence? 75 Hard leaves the diet to you too, but you pick it before day 1, not during.

Write the answers down before you start. A rule you make on day 19, after a missed workout, is a rule made by the most tired version of you.

The official 30-day version: LIVEHARD Phase 2

Andy Frisella does publish an official 30-day version of 75 Hard. It is called Phase 2, and it is the third stage of LIVEHARD, his year-long program. In his words, its tasks are "the exact same tasks as 75 HARD," only for 30 days.

The catch is the order. His LIVEHARD article lays out four stages that must all fit inside one year:

1. 75 Hard: 75 days of the five tasks.
2. Phase 1: 30 days of the five tasks, plus a 5-minute cold shower, 3 extra critical tasks from his Power List method and 10 minutes of visualization. After it, you must wait at least 30 days.
3. Phase 2: 30 days of the five tasks, with nothing added.
4. Phase 3: the last 30 days before the one-year anniversary of your 75 Hard start. The five tasks, the cold shower and the 3 extra critical tasks, plus a real conversation with a stranger and a random act of kindness each day.

A miss in Phase 1 or Phase 2 restarts that phase. A miss in Phase 3 restarts the whole program at day 1 of 75 Hard. And Frisella writes that "you can't skip around at all."

By Frisella's rules, a 30-day 75 Hard is not a way into 75 Hard. It is something you earn after it.

That does not make a 30-day trial a bad idea. It means a finished 30 Hard does not count toward anything official, and your 75 Hard still starts at day 1.

The real difference is what a restart costs

The daily tasks are the same, so the real difference between 30 Hard and 75 Hard is how much one miss can cost you. Here is the full load of each, assuming every day is done as written:

With the restart rule, a forgotten photo on the last day of 30 Hard sends 29 finished days back to zero. The same slip on day 75 of 75 Hard sends back 74. The workouts still happened, and so did the reading. Only the count starts over.

Long unbroken runs are rare, and they get rarer quickly. We looked at 1,089 habits from 928 people whose first checkin on Habit Huddle came between July 3 and August 21, 2026, and followed them through November 5. Of those habits, 72 (6.6%) reached 30 checkin days in a row. Only 34 (3.1%) reached 75 in a row. Count total checkin days instead of days in a row, and both numbers roughly double: 155 habits (14.2%) reached 30 days, and 64 (5.9%) reached 75.

These are all kinds of habits, not 75 Hard attempts. Days covered by a streak freeze are not counted. Treat the numbers as a rough guide to how rare long unbroken runs are, not as a 75 Hard finish rate.

In our data, an unbroken 75 days was about half as common as an unbroken 30.

So 30 Hard is a cheaper experiment, not an easier day. Day 12 of 30 Hard asks exactly what day 12 of 75 Hard asks. You simply have less on the line, which makes it a good place to learn which task gives you trouble first.

Is 30 days long enough to build the habits?

Thirty days is enough to build a routine, but for many people it is not enough for the routine to feel automatic.

The best-known study on this comes from UCL. In the 2010 paper, 96 volunteers each chose one eating, drinking or activity behavior to do every day in the same context, such as after breakfast, for 12 weeks. The time it took to reach their peak automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days, and the median was 66. Day 30 comes well before that median.

Two details make this less tidy than it sounds. The volunteers practiced one simple behavior, not five demanding tasks at once. And the same study found that "missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process."

The restart rule is a discipline tool, not a habit-science rule. One missed day does not undo a habit in progress. It does end a 75 Hard attempt, and that is by design: the rule exists to train you to keep promises to yourself, not to protect the habit.

Frisella picked 75 days because, in his words, that is how long the skills take. The UCL range of 18 to 254 days shows why any single number is a judgment call. Neither 30 nor 75 is a finish line for a habit. Both are containers.

Which one should you do first?

Start with 30 Hard if:

• You have never finished a challenge with several strict daily tasks. Thirty days shows you what breaks first, often the second workout or the water, at a third of the cost.
• You have a hard stop within the next 11 weeks, such as a trip, a move or a busy season at work.
• You want a trial run, and you will pick a 75 Hard start date before day 30.

Go straight to 75 Hard if:

• You want the program as Frisella wrote it, and maybe the LIVEHARD year after it.
• You already train most days, or you have finished a 30-day version.
• You can plan two workouts a day for 11 weeks, including the outdoor one on bad-weather days.

Do neither yet if:

• You are injured, pregnant or returning from a long break from exercise. Talk to your doctor first, as Frisella's own page tells everyone to do.
• A strict diet rule and a daily body photo would pull you toward unhealthy eating. A version without them is a better start.
• You have restarted 75 Hard several times and dread day 1. Our 75 Soft rules keep the structure without the restart, and our 75 Hard alternatives cover five more options.

Other 30-day versions of 75 Hard

30 Hard is not the only 30-day spin on the 75 Hard list. Three others show up often, each with its own trade-off.

• 30 Tough. A monthly gym challenge that Two Six Fitness ran in September 2022, borrowed from CrossFit Mayhem. Two 30-minute workouts (one outside), 10 minutes of nonfiction reading, water equal to two-thirds of your body weight in ounces, any diet with no alcohol or cheat days, and a daily photo. Scoring was a point for each task each day, with no restart rule.
• 31 Modified. Described by Bella All Natural as a one-month cut built for December: one 45-minute workout, 32 ounces of water, 15 pages of reading, a daily photo, limited alcohol and intermittent fasting.
• 30 Flirty. Per Reset75, you pick one or two habits from each of three areas (physical, mental, and emotional or soulful), with no restarts.

If you want to design your own month from scratch, our guide to a 30 day habit challenge walks through it, and the free 30-day challenge tracker prints 30 boxes with your real dates.

How to make 30 Hard a real step toward 75 Hard

A 30 Hard only prepares you for 75 Hard if it asks the same things of you. These five choices make the difference.

1. Use the full 75 Hard rules, restart included. If you drop the restart for 30 days, day 31 asks for a skill you never practiced.
2. Write your diet in one sentence before day 1. "No alcohol, no takeout, protein at every meal" is a rule you can keep. "Eat clean" is a debate you will have with yourself at 9pm.
3. Put both workouts on tomorrow's calendar tonight. One of them can be a 45-minute walk, which is Frisella's own example.
4. Pick your 75 Hard start date before day 30. Then day 31 has a plan instead of a gap. Our guide on when to start 75 Hard helps you pick one.
5. Bring one or two friends. In a 1999 weight loss trial, 95% of people who joined with friends and got social support finished the program, against 76% of people who joined alone and got the standard program. 66% of the first group kept all their weight off from month 4 to month 10, against 24%. That was a weight loss program, not 75 Hard, but the pattern is hard to ignore.

If you like paper, the free 75 Hard tracker printable prints all five tasks with your real dates.

Run 30 Hard or 75 Hard with friends in Habit Huddle

Habit Huddle is our app, so judge the reasoning. In Habit Huddle, you and a few friends join a huddle, and each person tracks their own habit. For 75 Hard, name the habit "All five tasks done" and set its Floor to the full list, since the program has no smaller version. For a modified 30 Hard, set the Floor to the minimum you wrote down. Friends cheer each checkin, and the huddle grows a Checkin Chain, with one link for each member's checkin that day.

Your streak works like the 75 Hard count. A missed day ends it, and your next checkin starts day 1. A missed day is never announced to the huddle.

The honest trade-offs:

• It is not a progress photo album. Anyone who views a huddle can see its checkins, so keep progress photos in your camera roll. Frisella says you do not have to post them anywhere. Photo Checkins are a pro feature, so on the free plan a checkin carries a note, not a photo.
• A streak freeze can cover a miss. New members get one starter freeze, and it can cover a missed day on its own once a streak reaches 7 days. 75 Hard counts that day as a miss, so decide before day 1 how you will treat it.
• It does not sync with a watch or count your water. It is where your friends see that you showed up.

It is free to start, with 1 habit in each huddle, and joining a friend's huddle by invite is always free. Start a huddle for your 30 Hard, send the link to one friend and pick day 1 together. For more on how it works, see our page on the habit tracker with friends.