Never Back Down is the new movie about a new guy at school who gets drawn into the world of Mixed Martial Arts in order to face up to a high school bully; he might just learn a few things about himself along the way too.

I caught up with Sean Faris, the hero of the story to ask him about getting in shape for the movie.

Three's A Crowd - So Mixed Martial Arts. Can you explain what that is to those who might not be so familiar?

Sean Faris - MMA is a combination of many forms of martial arts. Actually I think four of them are Olympic sports. They've been brought together under a new set of rules and scored to make one ultimate form of martial art. I think it's basically the evolution of many different martial arts coming together. UFC. Ultimate Fighting Championship is American based but, well you've got Cage Rage over here which is similar.

I've been a fan for 8 years so I'm pretty knowledgeable about it - not everything but you guys have a fighter called Paul Daly and he came up through Cage Rage and he's signed to an American company. Actually, I met him – I got a signed glove from him.

It's a mixture of all these martial arts coming together. Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu, Kung Fu, Karate, Tae Kwon Do, even wrestling – Greco Roman wrestling is involved. It's a different set of rules to protect the fighters and it's just the ultimate form of martial arts.

TAC - Did you do much training for it? Who did you train with?

SF - I trained with 87-11 Gym which is a stunt team based in Los Angeles. The head of which is Damon Caro and those guys actually did all of the stunt coordination for 300.

I worked with Danny Hernandez one on one and and a few other guys. They were all versed in different forms of martial arts, so it was good to learn from them all.

TAC - Had you done any martial arts before?

SF - Not at all. I'd never done martial arts before the film. But I've been a huge fan of MMA for the last 8 years.

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