Way back in 2012, I reviewed the book Hillfit. Hillfit is a HIT-based fitness program that uses bodyweight exercises to develop strength safely with minimal risk of injury. A year later, I covered version 2 of the book.
Hillfit was online and available for sale for a few years and then it was gone.
A wall sit is one of the exercises in Hillfit.
For several years, I would get emails asking what happened to the book and where they could get a copy. I didn’t know if it would ever be available again, so I reached out to author Chris Highcock with some ideas last month.
I created the Potato Hack website for Tim Steele’s book. But unlike that book, which you can purchase on Amazon, Chris wanted to make Hillfit available to everyone for free. I felt GitHub was the perfect free hosting solution that would let readers download both versions of Hillfit. GitHub is mostly used for code but is also a great tool for historical archiving. Unlike many fly-by-night hosting options, GitHub isn’t going anywhere.
Chris mapped hillfit.com to the Hillfit GitHub page. There is also a Hillfit private group on Facebook that gets a few posts each week on various fitness topics.
You can download Hillfit for free. If you use GitHub, give the repo a star.
Comments
Chris
April 14 at 2024 at 7:43 PM
Thanks MAS. I think the ideas here still hold up pretty well after 10 years or so. My own training is still pretty much this style although I do more static holds and timed static contractions too.
Hope it is helpful for anyone that downloads it.
Jim
April 14 at 2024 at 7:48 PM
@MAS You’re making a great contribution to the world by helping archive valuable sites. Between the Potato Hack, Neil Rogers and Hill Fit, I think this might be your super power.
MAS
April 15 at 2024 at 8:27 AM
@Chris - I agree. Thanks for making HF available.
@Jim - Thank you! I’m so glad the Ray Peat people stepped up to save his archives. I really didn’t want to start another project. :)
Chris
March 6 at 2025 at 11:41 AM
If I was to do an update now, I would include isometrics. The wall sit and plank cover are isometrics, but I think a timed static contraction pull over and dip or pushup would be good options. given the principle of supporting hillwalking, i’d also add isometric calf and tib raises.
MAS
March 6 at 2025 at 3:42 PM
@Chris - Hillfit 3.0 :)
Chris
March 6 at 2025 at 7:50 PM
@MAS
Maybe. But it would be brief. Life has been busy the last few years but I might have a think about a few pages
Joe
July 19 at 2025 at 11:22 PM
I used Hillfit for my primary workout for several years after I found Chris Highcock’s site. I still have my hardcopy printouts of Hillfit v1 and v2, but lost the PDF downloads after one of my computers died. I went to Github to download them, but unfortunately the PDF ‘s won’t download. There’s just a message about them not being correctly formatted.
MAS
July 20 at 2025 at 2:37 AM
@joe - It appears that GitHub has changed the way you can download PDFs.
Go to the version repo and click the PDF link. This opens the PDF on GitHub. Go to the upper right of the document and there will be a button to download the raw file. Click that and the PDF will download.
Try this and let me know if it doesn’t work.
Joe
July 20 at 2025 at 4:13 PM
Ok, I finally clicked on the right Icon!! Thank you!