Baltimore Martial Arts Academy

Steve Lord, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Instructor

Steve Lord, a purple belt and instructor at the Baltimore Martial Arts Academy, got hooked on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu the day he was beaten by an unlikely opponent.

He was in Hawaii in the 1990s, where he had gone to work as a cruise-ship chef (and occasionally bum around as a surfer), when he met Brazilians on his ship who took him to the Jiu-Jitsu school of Professor Romolo Barros. At that first practice, Steve did fairly well fending off some of his opponents on the mat.

Then Professor Barros called over a 110-pound kid and told Steve to fight him.

“I thought I was doing fine, because I didn’t feel any muscle from the guy,” Steve says. “He’s just floating around me — and the next thing I know I’m tapping.”

Steve, who had been a competitive wrestler as a kid and had also studied Tae Kwon Do, was intrigued by the technical aspects of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu — and the inherent challenges it presented. “It’s like solving puzzles, and one of the puzzles you have to solve is getting tapped — you have to deal with that and put that aside to advance.”

Although Steve started Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in Hawaii, a place where everyone has an interest in the martial arts, his studies accelerated after he started spending his winters working as a cook and snowboarding instructor near Salt Lake City, where he met Professor Pedro Sauer. He has been studying under Professor Sauer ever since. When he moved back to Baltimore, where he grew up, Professor Sauer just happened to set up a school in the area. Steve saw it as fate.

Today, he teaches weekly at the Baltimore Martial Arts Academy, concentrating on techniques in sequence, or “the way everything flows and interlocks, like chess,” he says. He says he wants to convey his love of the sport to students — to get them daydreaming about Jiu-Jitsu, like he does — and to help them feel more confident out on the streets.

“Number one, people should feel safe,” he says. “If people feel safe, I think they’re happy.”

But he also wants people to use some of the basic lessons of Jiu-JItsu in the battles of their everyday lives.

“I would apply the basic philosophy of ‘defense, position, submission’ to the outside world,” he says. “It’s a good mental paradigm for problem solving. When you are having a hard day, it’s defend, defend, defend. Then slowly get your position back, and then start to impose your will.”