Hiding Behind Fitness

By Rob Shaul, Founder

You train hard. You’re disciplined. You don’t miss workouts. You show up early, stay late, and eat clean. To the outside world—and your colleagues—this makes you admirable and disciplined. You’re setting the example.

But there’s a quiet, hard harder question you need to ask. Is your fitness a tool in your mission-performance toolbox—or are you hiding behind it?

Strange question coming from a professional strength and conditioning coach, but many times, I’ve hidden behind hard training to avoid making a big decision or having an uncomfortable conversation.

And I’m not alone.

In a February MTI podcast titled “Does Mental Fitness Transfer to Other Life Challenges,” I joined members of the MTI Athlete Team to discuss the modern “suffering industry”—social media influencers and organized hard events like obstacle races and ultramarathons.

These influencers and event organizers sell a familiar story: hard physical challenges test and reveal mental fitness and even moral character. But to a person on the podcast, we all agreed that we’ve often used hard fitness training not to prove resilience, but to escape from life’s pressures—to hide from personal failures and avoid the decisions we don’t want to face.

Sometimes, fitness isn’t applied discipline. It’s misapplied discipline.

For many—especially men—fitness can stop being a tool for health and mission performance and instead become a shield – a respectable, productive, measurable form of blatant avoidance.

Hiding Behind Fitness

Hiding behind fitness doesn’t look like weakness. It often looks like commitment. Discipline. The early-morning workouts. The meticulous nutrition. The “suffering” that others praise. It often includes legitimate physical progress and achievements.

But misapplied, fitness training becomes a way to push aside the work that doesn’t offer quick wins or quantifiable improvement:

• Emotional discomfort
• Conflict
• Failure
• Relational strain
• Skill gaps in other mission-critical areas

You don’t run from life. You ruck from it.
You don’t suppress feelings. You back squat over them.
You don’t face what’s wrong. You outwork it—until the next session.
Technical skill practice where you might not be as strong? Nah. Sprint repeats instead.

The Impacts of Using Fitness as Escape

1. Avoidance Masquerading as Progress

Fitness training feels like movement. Progress. Control. Improvement is measurable. It rewards effort. It’s one of the few areas in life where more work usually equals more progress.

But if you’re using fitness training to avoid a conversation, neglect a critical skill, or dodge a hard truth—you’re not making progress. You’re looping.

2. Emotional and Mental Underdevelopment

Suffering under load builds physical pain tolerance. But it doesn’t build:

• Courage in conversation
• Self-reflection
• Emotional presence
• Personal accountability

Fitness isn’t the only common escape. Some turn to alcohol. Others to food, sex, screens, or drugs. But fitness is different—because outsiders admire it. That makes it the most camouflaged form of avoidance there is.

3. Operational Gaps

Especially in tactical, mountain professional, and other high-risk occupations, fitness is one component of mission performance—not the job.

• The fit cop who can’t shoot
• The soldier who trains relentlessly but avoids tactical proficiency
• The mountain guide who trains legs and lungs but neglects equipment and planning
• The firefighter who’s strong but a poor communicator

Fitness becomes the safe place—the easy win. Meanwhile, critical skills atrophy.

4. Relational Drift

Many of us have used fitness training to avoid or neglect relationships at home or work.

• The people closest to you fall into second place.
• You justify detachment with discipline.
• You tell yourself it’s necessary.

Too often, fitness training becomes the socially acceptable excuse to avoid the harder work of connection and hard conversations.

5. Moral Justification Through Discipline

It’s easy to believe that because you train hard, that discipline extends everywhere. But that’s not always true.

You can be fit and still:

• Avoid leadership
• Fail to communicate
• Justify selfishness
• Evade accountability

Fitness doesn’t fix character or performance gaps, it only masks them for a while.

What you avoid in your workouts doesn’t disappear. It builds. It festers.

• You can set PRs every month and still lose your relationship.
• Run a sub-6 mile and still be a disengaged father.
• Be the fittest on your team and still get passed over for leadership.

The Comfort of Physical Suffering

If you’re reading this, you’re likely wired like most of the MTI community. You’ve graduated to MTI from other fitness programs. You’re professional about your fitness training.

But for many of us—myself included—when we’re conflicted, overwhelmed, or angry, there’s a welcome comfort in a brutal workout.

It’s predictable. It hurts in ways we understand. It gives us a score, a load, a time. It rewards effort—unlike the murkier parts of life, where effort doesn’t guarantee anything.

And so we hide there. Fitness should improve your life and mission performance. Not protect you from the other work that needs to be done.

Self-Assessment: Are You Hiding Behind Fitness?

No scoring. Just honesty.

Training Behavior

• Have I used workouts to avoid hard conversations?
• Do I feel anxious or lost when I can’t train?
• Do I regularly put training above connection, rest, or responsibilities?

Professional Alignment

• Am I neglecting job-critical skills because they’re less comfortable than training?
• Do I lean on my fitness to hide underperformance elsewhere?

Relational Awareness

• Do I justify disengagement by “needing to train”?
• Do I retreat into workouts instead of resolving conflict?

Internal Justification

• Do I believe being fit excuses my shortcomings?
• Deep down, am I using fitness to avoid parts of my life?

Final Thought – If even one of those questions made you pause—good. That pause matters.