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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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Heavy top control is the older grappler\u2019s 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\u2019s whole argument \u2014 and the argument at the center of the wider Jiu-Jitsu For Old Guys project \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Faria\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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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 \u2014 the precise skillset this course is built to teach.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 collar and sleeve material sits at the heart of almost every sequence.<\/p>\n
The course opens where an older grappler spends most of their winning rounds: on top in side control. Faria\u2019s shoulder pressure from side control is the foundation \u2014 the crossface-and-hip walk that makes the position feel heavy before a single submission is attempted.<\/p>\n
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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 \u201cworst position in Jiu-Jitsu\u201d framing is vintage Faria \u2014 he sells the pin as a prison the partner never gets comfortable in, which is exactly the mindset an older grappler needs to internalize.<\/p>\n
Knee on belly gets a deliberately short but sharp section. Faria\u2019s 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\u2019s the thinnest of the five parts \u2014 three chapters \u2014 and it reads more as a bridge between side control and mount than as a standalone module.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 once the hooks and seatbelt are set, Faria attacks rather than chasing points.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s a fitting bookend: the same pressure that opens the course from side control now smothers the guard player underneath.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Black belts will find the concepts sound but familiar \u2014 this is a greatest-hits summary of Faria\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Fast Track BJJ: Jiu-Jitsu For Old Guys: Nasty Control & Sneaky Submissions DVD does exactly what the name promises and stops there. It\u2019s a fast, coherent, honest distillation of Faria\u2019s pressure-top game, and as the offensive counterpart to the Fast Track Submission Escapes release, it completes the Fast Track pairing nicely.<\/p>\n