Paul Riley MMA blog from Afghanistan

Paul Riley talks about his MMA training and his service for our country in Afghanistan

I've learned that the sport of MMA is a ever evolving and a never ending game when it comes to preparation. Without preparation you have nothing but luck and in my case I've bought a few lottery tickets in my life and never won a damn thing. So my approach to it as a fighter is to never be unprepared when a door opens and opportunity stares me in the face.

With that said I thought I would fill everyone in on what I've been doing so far since deployed to Afghanistan. On a daily basis I’m doing what it takes to make sure I'm more than prepared when I get home to jump right into the cage. All fighters, especially fighters early in their career sometimes struggle with juggling training time with the responsibilities of work. Surprisingly, in my given situation it's not that big of a juggle for me over here.

Photo courtesy of Paul Riley

It took a little longer for my body to acclimate to the altitude, extreme heat, and travel through 11 different time zones than it has on my previous four deployments. Once my body adjusted though I fell into a pretty good routine workout wise. I'm running no less then 4 miles a day and that is only on the occasional lazy day. All other days I'm hitting the 6 mile mark. Then I'll take a break and head to the Heavy Bag. So far I've been working on my punching power on Monday's and Wednesday's and using Tuesdays and Thursdays to work on my hand speed. Then on Friday I bring it all together. After a few hours out of the gym I head back for my weight training. Right now I'm focusing on muscular endurance because I’ve built quite a bit of power prior to deployment in the weight room. I do my best to set up circuits similar to what Rich Franklin does on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm focusing on building explosiveness in my hips and through my core with kettle bells. Honestly I am using sand bags because I don't have any kettle bells over here but oh well.

I forgot to mention that all of this is being done around my patrol schedule that is sometimes long and tedious. I'm not going to let it turn into a excuse not to train though because even being half way around the world in a combat zone and away from the sport somewhat, new opportunities are presenting themselves to me on almost a daily basis.

Prior to leaving for Afghanistan I signed with Fighter's Guard Management which has given me tremendous exposure along with opening a lot of doors to top of the line training when I get back with Rob Radford, Nathan Fitch, and Chad Hinton. I plan on making damn sure while over here I'm prepared cardio wise so I can take full advantage of my time with them.

Another huge opportunity through the exposure created by my management came a few weeks ago when, Tuff-N-Uff, a top amateur promotion out of Las Vegas contacted me after reading a interview. They are interested in having me fight for them when I get back. In my opinion this will be a huge opportunity to close out my amateur career with them and set up my pro debut. I hope to turn professional with a well respected organization that I can grow with as a fighter.

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So far given my circumstances I've been lucky to have some good guys with some rounded skill sets to work with over here. The main obstacle has been training equipment but I'm making do with what I have.

Exclusive blog for ProFighting-fans.com provided by Paul Riley, U.S. Army SGT