Breakfast at the temple

Doesn’t feel good to come up short, but Devotion co-founder Matthias with some strong words for the crew today.

Exciting mail day at Devotion HQ Offices

Viktor joins us at Devotion for Circle of Honor

Hope you all had a great week training!

Good morning from our fog shrouded Appalachian temple!

Devotion 5 is currently nearing the halfway point of its writing process.

Anyone interested in contributing writing on the topics of devotion, martial arts, training, fitness, and so on can email submissions to

[email protected]

Our deadline for submissions is September 30.

We accept any length under 2500 words so long as it is well written, well edited and thought provoking or inspiring.

Sunday Sessions.

This week, we will be bringing you some video techniques from Matthias’ aggressive turtle guard game, and showing them applied successfully in competition.

Devotion co-founder Matthias Waggener introducing you to his turtle guard game.

Some basics to his system and a clip of him using this technique at worlds this year.

Hope you enjoy it!

A look at Monday night’s cypher with Coach Paul

Collar/sleeve control armbar technique, the base of a longer series of armbar attacks from this control/guard.

We run our sequences from standing at Devotion, but some nights we spend more time on one aspect of the sequence (standup, pass/retention, sweep/advance, submission/defense/escape) in order to make sure it “sticks.”

As the week progresses, the techniques in the sequence progress through various adjustments and reactions and is drilled live to ensure effectiveness.