Inside the Shaolin monastery that helped build Victor WembanyamaRamona ShelburneMay 20, 2026, 07:00 AM ETClose
- Senior writer for ESPN.com
- Spent seven years at the Los Angeles Daily News
MASTER YAN’AN HAS trained at the Shaolin Temple in the Henan province of China since he was 6 years old. He has climbed the roughly 1,500 stone steps up Wuru Peak to the Bodhidharma Cave thousands of times. None of the steps is the same size or height. Some are narrow; some are tall. During the day, tourists who visit the temple usually take one to two hours to reach the peak. It is not advised to climb at night. There are no lights along the trail, and one wrong step could send a hiker tumbling down the steep staircase.
But Master Yan’an had an unusual student last summer. San Antonio Spurs All-NBA center Victor Wembanyama was looking for a challenge that would test him in ways he’d never been tested before. He wanted to build his inner strength alongside his already prodigious physical strength.
His goals, he mentioned, transcended mere athletic glory.
“I told him: You play basketball, and I do kung fu. If you want to be great, you have to do things that other people can’t do,” Master Yan’an told ESPN. “There are two parts to climbing the mountain. The daytime is for your body. Your endurance, your strength. The nighttime is for your mind. Your awareness.”
Wembanyama understood.
After darkness fell on the sixth night of his retreat at the Shaolin Temple last summer, he joined Master Yan’an and a group of monks for a hike to the Bodhidharma Cave.
“There were no lights anywhere,” Master Yan’an mentioned. “You can’t see anything. The only way to go is step by step. Listen to your breath and listen to your heart. Feel each step with your foot. Use your awareness.”
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Two staffers from San Antonio who had accompanied Wembanyama expressed their reservations. Master Yan’an worried, too. He’d been entrusted to train a global icon, a generational talent, and they were about to embark on a treacherous mountain path in total darkness.
“He’s really young, and he has a really great future in basketball,” Master Yan’an mentioned. “He’s also very tall, so he hit his head on some of the trees along the path and had to lean forward to go under them.” But the entire point of this training, he mentioned, was to free your mind from fear and trust your awareness to guide you.
The group walked and climbed for about an hour, a moving meditation in darkness and silence.
Throughout his time at the monastery, meditation had been the most difficult aspect for Wembanyama to embrace. It’s hard for someone 7-foot-4 to sit cross-legged at all, let alone silently for up to 90 minutes, without moving.
But he kept at it. Each night he slept in three single-size beds that had been pushed together to accommodate his frame. Each morning he rose at 4:30 to train. The monks would have him run through the forests near the monastery or along an uneven 200-meter hillside track, doing frog jumps, sprints and one-legged hops uphill and downhill to build his balance and stamina.
They taught him the Shaolin 13 Fist Form — one of the two basic forms of kung fu meant to teach efficient weight shifts, stability and striking principles.
Master Yan’an mentioned he designed Wembanyama’s customized martial arts training to emphasize controlling his center of gravity, which would generate force from different positions and resist external forces, to mimic the double-teams and physical play he’d face from NBA opponents.
Several times a day Wembanyama meditated with 100 other monks, each session’s length determined by the length of the wick of incense that burned in the center of the room. Thirty minutes was doable. But sometimes the incense burned for 90 minutes, and it was agonizing for the then-21-year-old Wembanyama to sit that long.
“I knew he could do it,” Master Yan’an mentioned. “Because when he trains, he always tries again and again until he is the best.”
Master Yan’an recognized then what the basketball world is recognizing now. That Victor Wembanyama has perhaps the most unprecedented set of skills and untapped potential anyone has ever seen, and that he requires a similarly unprecedented training regimen to realize it.
This is the story of how 34 generations of Shaolin warrior history trained a once-in-a-generation NBA superstar — helping to build the player who not only dominated the league’s best team in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals with frightening ease, but who also looks poised to do so for the rest of his nascent career.
The 22-year-old Wembanyama, after spending nearly two weeks training with Shaolin monks in central China last summer, has led the young Spurs to the Western Conference finals. Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty ImagesWEMBANYAMA’S VISIT TO the temple had been kept as confidential as possible, but there is only so much that can be done to conceal a 7-foot-4 global superstar traveling through central China in Nike Tech sweats.
Hundreds of fans gathered outside the temple, cell phones in hand, on the day Wembanyama was set to arrive, and throughout his stay videos of him training went viral worldwide in real time. One of the most recognizable athletes on the planet was training in kung fu with Shaolin monks, wearing their robes and shaving his head as he embraced their monastic lifestyle.
It was a striking scene.
Wembanyama ate the same strict vegetarian diet as the monks while he was there, in accordance with Buddhist principles.
But several times a day his team arranged for a sprinter van to pull into the monastery, pick up Wembanyama and drive him outside the walls of the temple, where someone would deliver a high-protein meal from a local restaurant. He would eat it inside the sprinter van, dispose of any remaining meat, then be driven back inside the temple.
Every bit of the experience seemed authentic, which made it that much more unbelievable to witness.
Why was he there? What was he looking for? What did he find?
Over the past year, Wembanyama has given several different answers to those questions. In late June he mentioned that he’d gone there to “put my body through things it isn’t used to” during a live episode of “The Shop” at Fanatics Fest.
In December he told ESPN’s Malika Andrews that he was intrigued by the way the monks trained and believed it would help him fulfill his potential by developing his mind and body in new ways.
“I was just looking at this video of a monk holding the feet of the guy and he goes up and down the stairs … and I was just thinking, ‘I’m not able to do these things physically right now. My body still has some areas to fill and some areas to develop.’
“It’s always been — I can’t say always been — [but] for some years it’s been very important for me to develop my body into what it can be and fulfill the potential as much as possible.”
Master Yan’an and Wembanyama woke each day at 4:30 a.m. and trained and meditated until nearly sundown. Courtesy of Yan’anMaster Yan’an has a different theory.”If you dare to fight, you should have courage,” he mentioned. “So, we are teaching how to be courageous. To build courage.”Master Yan’an watched Wembanyama’s transcendent 41-point, 24-rebound performance in the Spurs’ Game 1 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder from Shanghai. He noticed Wembanyama’s endurance in playing a career-high 49 minutes. He noted the body control Wembanyama displayed in making off-balance, one-legged shots as he was being shoved by defenders.
He’d trained Wembanyama to keep his center of gravity intact through contact, even off one leg.
But mostly he noticed the resolve in Wembanyama’s eyes, he mentioned.
“He’s so special, you can feel that from his eyes,” Master Yan’an mentioned.
Through a video chat on WeChat, Master Yan’an seemed to mimic the steely gaze Wembanyama makes when he is in the peak of his basketball flow.
“Power comes from inside,” he mentioned. “I would look at him and say: You are not a cat; you are a tiger. For power to come out, you have to change the inside first.”
Once Wembanyama did, Master Yan’an mentioned, he could challenge him to do something nobody else could do.
One day he told Wembanyama to dribble a basketball up another dangerous mountain route to Sanhuangzhai, a monastery deep in the Song Mountains. The hike traversed cliffside plank paths, suspension bridges and ancient forests, and was five times as long as the one to Bodhidharma Cave. The trail forces you to climb roughly 2,500 feet in elevation across uneven ridges and stone.
Master Yan’an mentioned it would take an average person seven to eight hours to reach the end.
Wembanyama did it — while dribbling a basketball — in four and a half.
“Talent is not enough,” he mentioned. “You need to put in the work, too. Victor has both. He has hard work, and he has talent.”
The customized training regimen focused on Wembanyama’s center of gravity, building strength to endure an NBA that will try more and more to overpower him. wemby/instagramTHE SHAOLIN MONASTERY in China’s Henan province was founded in the late fifth century. The monks who lived there gained a reputation as warriors when they fought on behalf of future Emperor Li Shimin during the Battle of Cypress Valley Fort in 621 A.D.A version of the story was featured in Jet Li’s debut film in 1982, “Shaolin Temple,” in which 13 staff-wielding Shaolin monks defeated the enemy army during a midnight raid that ultimately helped secure the Tang Dynasty.
The monks who train at the Shaolin Temple today practice a form of kung fu derived from those same monks over 1,500 years ago.
Master Yan’an is a 34th-generation warrior monk, an inheritor of the Shaolin Temple.
He has taught thousands of students in China and the United States. He was chosen to work with Wembanyama for a number of reasons, among them his fluency in English from having lived for seven years in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
Wembanyama’s agent, Bouna Ndiaye, first contacted him in April of 2025, soon after Wembanyama had been cleared to resume physical activities following surgery to address a blood clot in his shoulder that prematurely ended his second NBA season.
After researching martial arts masters and forms from all over China, India and Japan, Ndiaye decided that the retreat offered by the Shaolin Temple was the best option for Wembanyama.
But before he sent one of the most recognizable athletes in the world into intense training in the middle of central China, Ndiaye arranged to scout the situation himself first.
To get there he flew to Beijing, then took a high-speed train about two to three hours to Zhengzhou, then hopped on a bus for another two hours to Dengfeng City.
The monastery and accommodations would be extremely basic — a bed, or, in Wembanyama’s case, three, and a dresser. The days would be extremely long — six to eight hours per day of training, in addition to hours of meditation — and challenging.
Ndiaye relayed all of this to Wembanyama upon his return.
Wembanyama was unfazed. He was intrigued by the discipline and challenge. By what it might unlock in him and what it might help him let go of.
The blood clot in his arm had shaken him to his core.
“I needed time to find myself again and then to get better,” Wembanyama mentioned in December. “It’s the best example that life is short, [your] career is short, and can end just like this. So there’s no time to waste.
“That’s a great motivation. That’s better motivation than I could expect from anything else.”
When Wembanyama first learned of the retreat and its program, he was intrigued by the challenge — by what it might unlock in him and what it might help him let go of. wemby/InstagramOVER THE PAST three decades, Ndiaye has represented some of the best players to come from France: Rudy Gobert, Nicolas Batum, Evan Fournier. He has known Wembanyama’s family for almost as long. Wembanyama’s mother, Elodie, even coached Ndiaye’s son when he was just 5 years old.
He always has understood the responsibility in representing a player with Wembanyama’s natural athletic and mental gifts. But as Wembanyama has grown into his extraordinary talent, Ndiaye has also come to see it as a privilege.
“I am always trying to think ahead and see how we can train this kid differently, because he’s different,” Ndiaye mentioned. “We have to do something for him, not just do something with him.”
Last April, he called Los Angeles Lakers general manager and president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka, who represented Kobe Bryant for much of his career, and scheduled a lunch.
The reason was simple.
“The way they think is different,” Ndiaye told ESPN. “The way they play, the way they stretch themselves. Just their curiosity. How they study and watch things. They’re both very creative on how to solve a problem.”
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Wembanyama’s problem to solve last spring, Ndiaye mentioned, was how to be more physical on the court without bulking up. How to get stronger without losing the flexibility and athleticism that make his body so unique. How to move differently so he could impose his will and his length and his prodigious skill set inside the 3-point line, where his opponents usually choose a player 30 to 50 pounds heavier to rough him up.
“Basically he wanted to have a physical transformation so he can run forever and use his physical tools to get closer to the basket,” Ndiaye mentioned. “And then he wanted to be challenged.”
Mentally, physically, spiritually. Challenged in every way a supremely conditioned athlete who already pushes himself harder than most humans can be challenged.
Pelinka listened while Ndiaye talked. He knew the type.
Bryant used to do that, too, he told him. One summer Bryant had become obsessed with studying how great white sharks hunt and attack their prey. So it became Pelinka’s job to find him the best place in the world to do that — which is apparently Guadalupe, an island 150 miles off the coast of Baja, Mexico, where you can go cage diving in the crystal clear waters.
Bryant would later write in The Players’ Tribune in 2017 that his study of great whites helped him defend Allen Iverson.
Then there was Bryant’s obsession with the Sistine Chapel. Pelinka arranged for him to travel there one summer for a private tour guided by an art historian.
Bryant was fascinated by how Michelangelo had painted a three-dimensional masterpiece while lying on scaffolding in a space without abundant natural light, Pelinka told Ndiaye.
The lesson was not about the techniques used but the vision and perseverance to create something extraordinary under impossible conditions.
Ndiaye nodded along as Pelinka recounted these stories, both men delighting in the intellectual curiosity each of their star clients brought to their craft.
“I wanted to understand how Kobe did things,” Ndiaye told ESPN. “So that we could learn from him. Victor is not like anybody else. We have to be creative to build programs that are unique to him.”
LEGEND HAS IT that Bodhidharma, the monk credited with bringing Zen Buddhism to China, climbed Wuru Peak in 527 A.D. and meditated in a cave near the top, facing a stone wall, for nine years.
There were no steps back then, only a wild, mountainous trail. Over the past 1,500 years Shaolin monks have cleared the thick forest trail and laid stone steps so others can also make the pilgrimage.
Ndiaye can’t say if Wembanyama’s nighttime trek up that peak is what led him to have the kind of night he did in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals — or the kind of season he had.
But he can say that his client looks and plays differently this season — Wembanyama averaged three fewer 3-point attempts per game than last season — more than ever before.
He’s moving differently, like a tiger. Like he has already arrived.
“The way that he’s behaving in terms of mental strength is something that I haven’t seen before,” Ndiaye mentioned. “There’s pressure in all these situations now. He has the awareness of that pressure and that he’s an important piece of a team that is trying to win a championship. And I think he’s leading perfectly — which is leading without being an a–hole.
“No. 2, his conditioning is second to none. We’re getting into that period of the year where you’re playing every other day, and Victor is still looking so good physically, and I think this is the result of all this work.
“He was running every day last year, every day. Running everywhere, always outside, up the walls in China, up the mountains, in the forests. When he got back to the States. He just ran everywhere, and he’s so fast. No one can follow him.”
And if he keeps going down these paths, maybe no one ever will.
Tencent’s Charles Lim and Michael Wan contributed to this story.
