Kafka, Esq.

"It's not golf," chuckles Kafka, who for a little more than a year has spent several nights a week practicing at Baltimore Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (www.baltimorebjj.com/), a Parkville-based school specializing in a sport that went largely unnoticed before its use in competitions like the Ultimate Fighting Championship (www.ufc.com/) catapulted it onto the world stage in the 1990s. "People kind of give you a strange look like, ‘Why are you doing this? You're not a kid, you're not in high school.' But once you do it – to me, it's almost addictive."

A hybridization of Judo and traditional Japanese Jujutsu that traces its roots to early 20th century Brazil, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu emphasizes self-defense. "It started out so a smaller man could beat a larger man, using mostly joint-manipulation and strangulation holds," notes Kafka.

"And these are real-life holds," he stresses. "When we practice, you try to [force] the other person to submit."

But while other martial arts might incorporate more "stand-up" maneuvers such as punching and kicking, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu focuses on ground-fighting techniques – an aspect that Kafka finds particularly appealing.

"In Judo, if you take someone and throw them to their back – what's called a clean throw – it's the end of the match, it's over," he explains. "In Jiu Jitsu, it's just beginning; you throw them clean – now we're going to the ground."

It was Brazilian Jiu Jitsu's combination of contact sport and "competitive edge" that drew Kafka, who had wrestled and played football while growing up but found little to appease his love for contact sports in his post-high school years. "I always enjoyed wrestling more than football because when I go out there, [if] I win I win, [if] I lose I lose – what you're putting into it you're getting out of it. Same with [being] a criminal defense attorney – I still have my colleagues with me for advice, but when you go up to a trial table, it's really you. When you go out there on the mat, your team's there rooting you on and your coach is sitting there in the corner telling you what to do, but at the end of the day it's you out there, win, lose or draw."

Because the sport is still so relatively fresh on the American martial arts scene, it still lacks a national governing body; instead, schools like Baltimore Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (and its parent school, Maguilla's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy & Combat Club in Silver Spring) compete within themselves as well as with each other in almost feudalistic fashion, while organizations like the North American Grappling Association (www.nagafighter.com/) and Grappler's Quest (www.grapplersquest.com/) hold tournaments around the country.

"I think there is going to be a national organization within the next 10 years, because everybody wants standards, guidelines, so we know who's the king of the hill," says Kafka, who has witnessed the sport's growth firsthand; classes that might have only boasted two or three attendees a year or more ago, he says, now number upward of 20 on any given night. Moreover, Kafka explains, the sport is drawing men (and women) as varied as lawyers, doctors and mechanics, as well as high school and college students. Even Johns Hopkins University now hosts a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Club.

"It's a little shocking [at first], but you've got to step out of your safety zone a little bit to really grow as a person," says the Reisterstown native. "Come in, give it a chance. First lesson's free. It's an ego-free environment; there's no one there trying to show anybody up or hurt anybody. We're all there working together, just trying to get better as a team."