Key Takeaways
- Jiu-Jitsu For Old Guys Nasty Control & Sneaky Submissions review — Bernardo Faria condenses his pressure-top game into a single ~51-minute Fast Track volume covering side control, knee on belly, mount, the back and top half guard.
- Who it’s for: older grapplers and masters competitors who would rather grind on top than scramble, plus anyone who wants a quick-study refresher on Faria’s control.
- The thread: shoulder pressure and tight pins, with a choke or armlock taught off every position — scarf choke, Ezekiel, baseball bat choke, kimura, armbar and bow and arrow.
- Key limitations: it’s condensed by design, roughly ten minutes per position, and nearly every finish needs the Gi, so No-Gi carryover is limited.
- Format: $67, streamed or downloaded through the BJJ Fanatics App, with a 30-day refund if not downloaded.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 8.5 out of 10.
Nasty Control & Sneaky Submissions Bernardo Faria DVD DOWNLOAD
Bernardo Faria built one of the most successful super-heavyweight careers in modern Jiu-Jitsu without ever leaning on speed, and Fast Track BJJ: Jiu-Jitsu For Old Guys: Nasty Control & Sneaky Submissions is the condensed version of how he did it. This is the attack half of the Fast Track line — the direct counterpart to the Fast Track Submission Escapes review, which covers the defensive side of the same series. Here the subject is pressure from the top and the submissions that fall out of every pin.
Turning Pressure Into Taps
Heavy top control is the older grappler’s great equalizer. A younger, more athletic opponent can win scrambles all day; what they cannot easily do is breathe under a correctly placed shoulder. Faria’s whole argument — and the argument at the center of the wider Jiu-Jitsu For Old Guys project — is that an older player wins by making every position heavier, not faster, and by attacking from pins instead of chasing back-and-forth transitions.
That framing makes this volume a useful companion piece inside a specific ecosystem of Faria material. The seven-volume Jiu-Jitsu For Old Guys flagship review treats the full system, the five-volume bottom-game instructional covers the guard side of the same philosophy, and the Bernardo Faria DVD collection gathers the wider library.
The Fast Track BJJ series strips each of those pillars down to its essentials, and this volume is the top-game pillar. That condensed format is a feature, not a defect, for the buyer who wants the core ideas without fifteen hours of video.
Bernardo “A Huge Honor” Faria
Faria’s credentials for teaching exactly this material are hard to overstate. A Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt under Ricardo Marques, who worked extensively with Fabio Gurgel and competed for Alliance, he won IBJJF World Championship titles in 2010, 2013 and 2015, including the 2015 absolute title.
Bernardo is a co-founder of BJJ Fanatics, and he spent his competitive career as a super-heavyweight leaning on the half guard, the wheel sweep and heavy passing rather than athletic scrambles — the precise skillset this course is built to teach.
Nasty Control & Sneaky Submissions Bernardo Faria DVD Review
One volume, five parts, about fifty-one minutes. The structure is deliberately economical: each position gets its controls first, then its finishes, in that order. Faria films in the Gi throughout, and the grips make that obvious — collar and sleeve material sits at the heart of almost every sequence.
Part 1: Side Control
The course opens where an older grappler spends most of their winning rounds: on top in side control. Faria’s shoulder pressure from side control is the foundation — the crossface-and-hip walk that makes the position feel heavy before a single submission is attempted.
From there he shows how to climb to high mount, then runs through the finishing options: the scarf choke in three variations, a Marcelo-style armbar, the kimura from north-south, and the north-south armbar and choke. The “worst position in Jiu-Jitsu” framing is vintage Faria — he sells the pin as a prison the partner never gets comfortable in, which is exactly the mindset an older grappler needs to internalize.
Part 2: Knee on Belly
Knee on belly gets a deliberately short but sharp section. Faria’s knee on belly pressure shows the mechanics of making the knee genuinely painful rather than balanced, then uses it to force the far-side armbar and the baseball bat choke. It’s the thinnest of the five parts — three chapters — and it reads more as a bridge between side control and mount than as a standalone module.
Part 3: Mount
Mount is where the volume spends its most distinctive material. Faria teaches opening the mount with the hips rather than forcing the arms, then layers the armbar from high mount, like monoplatas, arm triangles, and the coveted superman attack. His nasty Ezekiel choke is also worth trying out in rolling. This is the sequence that most rewards repeat viewing, because it shows pressure creating reactions rather than just holding position.
Part 4: Back
From the back, the finishes are collar-driven and immediate: the collar choke, the spread chicken, the bow and arrow choke, and another Ezekiel, this time from the back. A sneaky transition connects the arm triangle from the previous volume when the partner escapes to the side. The theme stays consistent — once the hooks and seatbelt are set, Faria attacks rather than chasing points.
Part 5: Half Guard
The final part flips the perspective to top half guard, where Faria has spent much of his competitive life. Shoulder pressure from half guard, the forehead-against-diaphragm (this was suprisingly effective when I tried it) and the signature Bernardo dog bar close things out. It’s a fitting bookend: the same pressure that opens the course from side control now smothers the guard player underneath.
How to Fast Track When You’re Old
This is a course you can actually finish, which is rarer in the instructional market than it should be. A committed student can watch it through in an evening and take one idea per week to class for a couple of months. The realistic path is to treat it as a drilling syllabus: pick a position, work the control until it feels heavy, then bolt on the finish. Because every part assumes you already have the position, the material slots into an existing top game far more cleanly than it builds one from nothing.
Jiu-Jitsu For Old Guys: Nasty Control & Sneaky Submissions DVD HERE
Who Is This For?
White and blue belts who already play top will get the most out of this, as will older grapplers and masters competitors rebuilding a game around pressure. As an introduction to BJJ for older grapplers, the Fast Track format is genuinely hard to beat. The shoulder-pressure and pin details are the kind of thing that pays off for years.
Black belts will find the concepts sound but familiar — this is a greatest-hits summary of Faria’s longer material, not a new system. No-Gi players should look elsewhere: the scarf choke, Ezekiel, baseball bat choke, collar chokes and the bow and arrow choke all require the Gi, and the limited No-Gi carryover is a real constraint. Complete beginners who want a system taught from the ground up are better served by the full-length sets.
Pros And Potential Drawbacks
Pros:
- Genuinely finishable: under an hour, five clean parts — you can study the whole thing and still remember it on the mats.
- A coherent philosophy, not a grab bag: shoulder pressure is the thread that ties every position together, so it teaches a game rather than a list of moves.
- Finishes attached to every control: each part pairs the pin with its choke or armlock, which is how pressure becomes offense.
- Credible instructor: Faria built a super-heavyweight career on exactly this style, so the material is pressure-tested rather than theoretical.
- Sensible price point: $67 with a 30-day refund if not downloaded makes it a low-risk entry into the Fast Track line.
Potential Drawbacks:
- Gi-only: almost every finish needs the collar, so No-Gi grapplers get limited value.
- Assumes a top game already exists: it teaches you to make a pin heavier and finish from it, not how to get there against a resisting guard.
Nasty Old Guys
Fast Track BJJ: Jiu-Jitsu For Old Guys: Nasty Control & Sneaky Submissions DVD does exactly what the name promises and stops there. It’s a fast, coherent, honest distillation of Faria’s pressure-top game, and as the offensive counterpart to the Fast Track Submission Escapes release, it completes the Fast Track pairing nicely.