Where to start with the film Jiu Jitsu (2020)? It’s listed as a ‘science fiction martial arts film’. The plot revolves around the ancient order of expert Jiu Jistu fighters who, every six years, must defend earth from alien invaders.
Continue reading Jiu Jitsu (2020) – Fight Quality Film Review
Greco-Roman wrestling, as its name suggests, is a modern style of wrestling that’s designed to be as similar as possible to the styles of wrestling practiced by the ancient Greeks and Roman’s in competitions like the ancient Greek olympics. Thankfully the tradition of wrestlers competing naked didn’t get carried on into the modern version of the sport.
Continue reading A Brief History of Greco-Roman Wrestling
Sanda is China’s official full contact combat sport. It was formerly known as Sanshou and get’s called Chinese Boxing or Chinese Kickboxing. It’s seen as the equivalent to Thailand’s national sport of Muay Thai, but with its own complex history of development.
Continue reading A Brief History of Sanda
A skipping rope is an extremely versatile training tool. Small enough to pack any time your traveling its the easiest way to get in work on the move. Despite this, skipping can be incredibly challenging and really push your cardio to another level. There’s a reason skipping has been a training tool for fighters for generations. Alongside developing cardio fitness it improves other aspects of your skills like footwork and rythmn. From black and white video of Muhammed Ali swinging a leather rope to 20 minute long Muay Thai warm ups you find ropes in every gym. However, like all training, not having a plan before you can set you up for a rubbish time. Thankfully Fight Quality is here to help and we’ve listed our favourite ways to utilise skipping to improve your cardio. Read on and find out our favourite ways to approach our skipping sessions.
Continue reading Skipping for Cardio: Fight Quality’s Favourite Approaches
Mr Calzaghe is a 2015 documentary that follows the career of legendary Welsh boxer Joe Calzaghe. It charts his journey through his highly touted amateur career, the jump to turning pro, challenges with repeated injuries all the way through to breaking through to popularity in America and his retirement – undefeated with a record of 46-0.
Continue reading Fight Quality Film Review – Mr Calzaghe (2015)
We’re all counting down the days until we get to see some more action and it can be a challenge to keep track of what MMA events are coming up. We’ve taken a look at the calendars for some of the major MMA organisations and have put together a list of this week’s upcoming MMA events for you, so you can plan out what fight cards will fill your week’s viewing!
Continue reading The Fight Calendar: Upcoming MMA Events for the Week
Okay so let’s start off by admitting that this one technically isn’t a film review. FightWorld, a Netflix docu-series following Frank Grillo – ‘actor and life long fight enthusiast’ – as he travels the world learning about local fight cultures. The series sees him in Mexico, Thailand, Myanmar, Senegal and Israel looking at the significance of their combat sports.
Continue reading Fight Quality Film Review – FightWorld (2018)
There’s a chance you’ve heard of Vale Tudo (if you’ve watched MMA long enough you’ve probably heard it referenced somewhere). You might know that MMA developed from Vale Tudo, but do you know much about the Brazilian fighting style itself?
Continue reading A Brief History of Vale Tudo
Mixed Martial Arts is one of the biggest sports on the planet at current – ONE Championship averaged 29 million viewers per event in 2019 (according to their CEO Chatri Sidyodtong) the UFC was involved in the largest sports acquisition in history when it sold to WME-IMG for four billion dollars and the sport has generated superstar athletes like Conor McGregor who have surpassed the sport and became household names. Not bad for a sport that was widely banned and compared to human cockfighting in the not too distant past. But how did this global phenomenon come to be the sport it is today?
Continue reading A Brief History of MMA
The term kickboxing can have a pretty broad application. Technically it refers to any stand up martial art that allows kicking and punching and so covers a pretty broad spectrum of styles. The narrower focus of the name would be styles that identify as kickboxing, which still includes a lot of sports, but for the sake of this article we’ll be focusing on the history of Japanese Kickboxing, and its spread to Europe, and North American Kickboxing which has similar roots but developed separately. Alongside Muay Thai, which we’ve covered separately, much of modern kickboxing has come from these styles.
Continue reading A Brief History of Kickboxing
Capoeira is an unusual style of martial art that has an Afro-Brazilian origins, focuses predominantly on using your lower body to kick, sweep and take your opponents down, though elbow and hand strikes are also incorporated, and is designed to allow a fighter who’s outnumbered to take on even armed enemies.
Continue reading A Brief History of Capoeira
You’re going hard in sparring, working with someone bigger than you to get ready for an upcoming fight. Or maybe you’re having the fight, with small gloves being swung hard back and forth. Suddenly your guard drops lower than it should as you throw a punch and you catch a counter hook right on the edge of your eye socket. There’s a lot of pain and some quick swelling, you might get double vision or your eye might bulge right out. Welcome to your new orbital fracture.
Continue reading Common Training Injuries and How to Treat Them – Orbital Fracture
Gyms may still be shut and the country locked down (at least here in the UK) but with the vaccine rollout underway there’s some light starting to show at the end of the tunnel. We know many of you might have found ways to keep training throughout the pandemic, you might have started working on improving other aspects of your training or, like us, you might have spent a bit too much time sitting on the sofa watching movies.
Continue reading Returning to Running After a Training Break
With shows like ONE Championship putting Muay Thai, a martial art with a long and storied history, at the centre of some seriously high profile events they’ve given Muay Thai a platform and reach that it’s never really achieved before. At FQ we love ONE Championship, and we’re incredibly pleased to see our favourite martial art reach so many new fans, and fighters get rewarded for the years of hard work they put into their training, but it’s easy to see that some of the traditions that go alongside it might get pushed to one side, or be seen but not understood. We want to do our part to help people new to Muay Thai to understand the significance of some of what they see in big shows like ONE, and what they might encounter if they branch out and watch Muay Thai from different promotions!
Continue reading Wai Kru, Mongkol and Prajioud; Ancient Traditions in Modern Muay Thai
Here at FQ we firmly believe that martial arts are for everyone. You can find a million motivational quotes about how martial arts teach you so much, but there’s truth behind them – it’s more than just a way to get in great shape.
Continue reading Five Top Tips For Martial Arts Beginners
What do tennis players, weightlifters and fighters have in common? Grunting really loudly as they hit (or lift) stuff.
Continue reading Why Do Fighters Grunt While They Train?
We’re sure you, like all of us at FQ, were really pleased to hear the news that gyms were starting to reopen in the UK this week – our itchy knuckles have been dying to hit some stuff for too long!
Continue reading Three tips for staying safe on your return to the gym
With constant dramatic headlines, the sudden realisation of how often you touch your face and the fact you can’t buy a roll of toilet paper anywhere it’s easy to feel like the apocalypse is inbound at the moment. Statistically if you’re someone reading this you’re fit, healthy and exercise regularly, so are likely to be in the lower risk categories but you’re also likely to know people who are at higher risk from the virus and we’re assuming you’re going to want to try and not pass it on to them. If everyone stays calm (anyone with a garage full off loo roll we’re looking at you) and does their part to stop the spread we can help reduce the load on health services, stop vulnerable people from contracting coronavirus and make sure society doesn’t grind to a halt.
Continue reading Training Around Coronavirus
Sambo is a Russian martial arts developed during the soviet era. It was designed to teach soldiers of the red army hand-to-hand combat skills. The name is an acronym of “samozashchita bez oruzhiya” which means “self defence without weapons”, and it was designed to incorporate the most effective elements of several martial arts into one discipline.
Continue reading A Brief History of Sambo
Katie (2018) is a documentary following the life of Katie Taylor, charting her journey from having to pretend to be a boy to get fights (Ireland wouldn’t sanction female boxing, so she would put her name down as ‘K. Talyor’ and walk out to the ring with her headgear on) to become Ireland’s greatest sportswoman.
Continue reading Fight Quality Film Review – Katie (2018)