Bernardo Faria's Competition Prep Secret

By Fanatics Authors, June 13, 2018

There is a special subset of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioners who work to perfect their techniques and develop their BJJ games to test themselves in the competition arena. It has been said that approximately 10-15% of the people in the world training BJJ, train to compete.

BJJ is a challenging art and sport. Choosing to compete raises the stakes and with those stakes, the intensity of your training and the challenges you must face. World class competitors are known to train sometimes 3 or more sessions per day, with additional strength and conditioning and cardio sessions mixed throughout their week. This could translate into 8 or more hours per day of training and drilling, not to mention the time that they spend studying and working on the mental aspect of their games.

Bernardo Faria is one of the most successful BJJ athletes to ever compete, having won 5 World Championship titles, amongst other titles before retiring from competition in 2017. As a competitor, Bernardo would train two and possible three times per day. During one of those training sessions each day, he would follow a specific game plan that, in looking back on his career, was one of the secrets to his success. Check out the video below to find out what that secret was.

Bernardo's secret was to finish at least one of his daily training sessions with 4-5 training rolls with fresh partners. This was after the class was over and everyone had left. He would go from fresh partner to fresh partner pushing himself for about 30 extra minutes each hard training session. It's important to note that amongst those fresh training partners were monsters like Jonathan Satava and Matheus Diniz.

It's important to note that Bernardo describes these sessions as him being beat up during the entire sessions. He would have his guard passed and would be submitted many, many times during the sessions. This fact didn't bother him. First and foremost, he was digging deep inside himself and strengthening his resolve. By going deep into the depths of fatigue, he knows that he is training harder than anyone else and by the time the competition arrives, he knows he has done all he could to prepare.

In his new BJJ instructional from BJJ Fanatics, "Foundations of BJJ", Bernardo Faria offers a complete course that covers all of the most important positions that everyone should know. This set is over 5 hours in length covering take downs from standing to all of the major dominant positions in BJJ, with sweeps and submissions from each of those positions. This will become a resource that will continue to be reviewed for your entire BJJ career. Check it out here!