Bryan Barberena balancing hay and haymakers
Barberena spent this fight camp balancing his family’s new farm lifestyle with his work in the gym.
Just before his fight of the year candidate fight with Vicente Luque, Bryan Barberena moved with his family from Arizona to a farm in Tennessee. The choice was a big lifestyle change for ‘Bam Bam’ and his family. Now much more settled in his new digs, Barberena spent this fight camp balancing this new lifestyle with his work in the gym.
I travel for fight camp. I’m gone all week. I come home on the weekends, and it can be tough at times balancing, Barberena said to the Top Turtle MMA Podcast. When I come home, I want to spend my time with my wife and kids.
However, with all of that work to be done on the farm, he isn’t always able to drop everything to spend time with his three kids. Just like in the cage though, Bareberena gets creative and finds a way to make things work.
There’s farm work to be done and my wife is handling everything she can during the week for the farm. When I come home, there’s things that need to be done, he said. I try to get them done, and I try to get them done with my family – have [my kids] with me, riding with me on the tractor… There’s always work to be done and we try to do it all as a family so we can do it together and be together.
Most recently this camp was made extra busy by the arrival of the first hay season, which meant that Barberena’s weekend was extra busy.
It was hay seasons, we had our first cut of hay in the middle of camp, he shared. So I came home on the weekend, had to get right into cutting hay – raking it, tedding it and then baling it.
Because of all of this extra traveling and needing to be home, Barberena permanently moved his camp closer so that the travel would be easier on him and his family.
My whole camp has moved. I do my whole camp with Jeff Jimmo at Gym-O in North Carolina, he said. It’s not too far from home and it’s actually not that far from Greenville.
And while all of these changes may have been a lot to handle, Bareberena wouldn’t have it any other way.
The farm life is amazing. I love it. The family is loving it; there’s been great experiences, he said. We’ve had new life born on the farm for the first time from cows to goats to chickens. It’s been a great experience.
Barberena shows off the labors of this fight camp this weekend at UFC in Greenville, South Carolina, against Randy Brown at UFC on ESPN+ 12.
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Author Daniel Vreeland is a co-founder of the Top Turtle Podcast, and a brown belt in Jiu-Jitsu at New England Submission Fighting in Amherst, Massachusetts.
