Key Takeaways
- An eight-part No-Gi DVD offering the essential building blocks of a No-Gi BJJ game.
- Includes standing, guards, passing pins, submissions, and escapes.
- Features mini-systems that can help you improve certain aspects of your No-Gi game on their own or your entire game as a whole.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 7 out of 10.
NO-GI FOUNDATIONS OF BJJ BERNARDO FARIA DVD GET HERE
What part of your No-Gi game do you feel needs to improve the most? Perhaps it is all across the board if you’re one of those folks dreading No-Gi open mats. Whatever the reason behind your interest in the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD, the content inside it is going to be useful.
No-Gi Jiu-Jitsu is a whole different animal than Gi, and it is not easy to make that transition. I will always be a proponent for practicing both, as that’s the best way to truly learn BJJ. That said, if it is No-Gi time for you, here is how learning from Bernardo Faria can help.
Building Blocks of BJJ
There are certain things you can’t do without in BJJ. You can’t have any hope of offering someone a tough role if you don’t have a proper guard you can attack from, a couple of submission traps that allow you to switch positions, at least one pin you can hold until you become bored, and an idea of which direction you should escape to when you’re on defense.
The above is as oversimplified as I can put it, but I am patiently going to wait with my coffee mug for anyone to change my mind. No? Okay, let’s go on.
What I shared above is not a game plan. There is a huge difference between a game plan and foundations that allow you to even roll. You can’t have a game plan without foundations, so building blocks come before the building itself. It is what the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD attempts to, fairly successfully, provide.
Bernardo ‘Huge Honor For Me’ Faria
Depending on how long ago you started training Jiu-Jitsu, you know Bernardo Faria either as a top heavyweight competitor who was unstoppable with the Gi or as the man who built the biggest digital library of BJJ knowledge behind the phrase ‘huge honor for me’.
Bernardo started BJJ as a teenager in his native town of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. He had his eye on a world title since his white belt days, medaling in the Mundials at every belt level without winning the gold until the purple belt. Once he did it, though, he got a knack for it—Faria went on to win the Mundials a total of four times at black belt.
Faria spent all his training under his first instructor, Ricardo Marques until he got his black belt. He then moved to Alliance, looking for a career in Jiu-Jitsu and forged a relationship with the team’s founder Fabio Grugel.
Since hanging up his competition Gi, Faria focused on getting all the biggest names in BJJ to share their knowledge via video instructional, which he records, produces, and releases. Of course, his platform represents the perfect opportunity for him to share some of his knowledge as well, especially in long-form instructionals such as the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD.
No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD Review
The No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD contains 8 volumes and a ton of information on how to approach grappling without the Gi. There is just under 6 hours of material in it, organized in a way that is methodical and easy to understand:
Part 1 – Standing
I am not the biggest fan of instructionals that try to deliver bits and pieces of standing techniques. Stand-up exchanges never work in such a linear fashion, and this first part of the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD, unfortunately, offers exactly this type of information.
There are interesting details on specific moves, but unless you’re comfortable wrestling, they are far from the foundations you need to build a standing game for No-Gi. Faria shares his thoughts on double legs, arm drags, headlocks, and collar ties, as well as a few words on timing. While the material is high quality, it is too much and there are no connections between the subjects.
The one part of this first volume that I quite liked is the precise breakdown of the sprawl – now that’s foundational stuff! Bernardo shows how to execute this staple grappling move against most attacks and how to finish from the position with the usual front headlock chokes.
Part 2 – Pulling Guard
Faria was an exceptional guard player in his competition days, so there’s lots of information on that aspect of the game in this, and the following three parts of the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD. That’s a great thing, though.
Guard is an absolute necessity in No-Gi, and most of the guards you can pull off with the help of the Gi are worth nothing once you’re only divided by rashguards )presuming you’re civil in your choice of No-Gi attire). Faria starts by talking about guard pulls in a way that truly covers all the fundamentals.
He shares 2-on-1 setups, collar tie guard pulls, and double wrist grip entries tying them in a neat little system that can lead to closed guard, open guard, or half guard. The exploration of No-Gi guards continues straight from the pull with Faria focusing on the quintessential No-Gi guard – the butterfly, used to sweep and submit kneeling opponents.
Part 3 – Guard vs Standing Opponents
The theme of the butterfly guard continues in the next part of the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD where Bernardo adjusts it to deal with standing opponents. He uses sit-up guard variations to offer wrestle-up sweeps mostly by way of Kouchi Gari.
The natural progressions of guard vs. standing opponents also feature in the form of X-guard variations, another staple of No-Gi guards. This part of the DVD focuses on the Single Leg X guard and does a pretty decent job of not overcomplicating but still offering versatile options.
Part 4 – Half Guard & X-Guard
Bernardo stays on track with the X-guard, moving to the full X in the fourth part of his No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD. Similarly to the Single Leg X, he shares essentials that will teach you how to play the guard or improve it if you already have an understanding. He even goes into the inverted X, providing ammunition for more advanced grapplers.
One of Faria’s signature positions, the half guard finally features, and it’s noticeable in the amount of information he delivers. Bernardo covers a mini system of several half guards, which, I agree are foundational, but one chapter per deep half, knee shield, and the single leg half is nothing more than an overview. I’d have preferred to focus on one, such as the knee shield.
Part 5 – Closed Guard & Passing
The best guard to play in No-Gi, as far as I am concerned is the last guard covered by Bernardo in this instructional. He chose the overhook route to help you master the closed guard quickly, which is the most reliable and easy-to-learn option.
The system includes Kimura lock combo attacks (sweeps and submissions), triangle setups, and classics such as the hip bump sweep. I appreciated a lot that Bernardo addressed a common problem people have, which is people standing up in the overhook closed guard.
About halfway through this part of the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD the attention shifts towards passing. Faria shares his signature system of over-under passing combined with body locks.
Once again, I feel he should’ve stopped with those two, and delivered more information. Instead, he also crammed through the legs passing, double under passing, and dive-in passing, ending up with plenty of incomplete information that beginners won’t know what to do with.
Part 6 – Side Control & Mount
The sixth portion of the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD is one of the best in the instructional, covering not just attacks from side control and mount, but also ways to combine the two pins.
Faria shares common side control dilemma attacks, focusing on armbars as the submission of choice. Simple, to the point, and easily connectable to mount – material with world-class quality. Transitions to the mount followed by more armbar setups make this my favorite part of the DVD.
Part 7 – Back & Turtle
Another solid volume that will teach you how to strangle people from the back. Bernardo doesn’t complicate at all in this part, sharing several ways to wrap up a Rear Naked Choke, while showing how to easily prevent your opponent from escaping back control.
the crucifix position and turtle get honorable mentions in the closing chapters of this volume of the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD. The crucifix stuff is helpful, but the turtle attacks are useless against modern turtle defenses. Only dent in an otherwise solid volume.
Part 8 – Escapes
I have no idea why the escapes volume opens with heel hooks and leg locks, but I guess they had to feature somewhere. Once again, nothing more than a one-chapter overview, lasting less than 10 minutes.
The actual escape material is considerably longer and better organized, featuring key side control, mount, and back escapes. Bernardo uses a system that revolves around a couple of proven directions of escape and pairs them up with counters that only make them more effective. A nice way to wrap up the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD.
Grappling Without the Gi
No-Gi BJJ is fun and all, but it is a lot harder than rolling with the Gi. The main reason – there is no Gi. Yeah, I know, painfully obvious, but still, absolutely necessary to point out as people love to ignore this particular fact.
What I see very often when Gi grapplers look toward No-Gi is that they’ll try to focus on stuff that they use with the Gi, even though it is obviously going to fail miserably in an environment where it is not present. My take on things is that everything that works in No-Gi works just as well with the Gi. However, it doesn’t work the other way around.
The bottom line here is that if you want a No-Gi game, you can’t use your Gi game, or learn Gi Jiu-Jitsu from instructionals and expect to carry the knowledge over to No-Gi. You’ll need to be aware that you need a No-Gi-specific approach to things, based on the moves that work the best when the Gi is not there to provide a get-out-of-jail-free card when you mess up.
The No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD offers a lot of building blocks to help you construct a fool-proof No-Gi game. It may not offer everything you need for each block, but that’s why you have specialized instructionals once you understand where the blocks fit.
DOWNLOAD HERE: FOUNDATIONS OF BJJ BERNARDO FARIA DVD
Build Up Your Game!
Building your game for No-Gi is going to take time, especially if you’ve mostly done Gi BJJ. Figuring it out on your own will take even more time, so investing in a resource such as the No-Gi Foundations of BJJ Bernardo Faria DVD is a great way to accelerate your progress and minimize your error rate.
New Bernardo Faria DVD Review – Foundations Of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
