At this point, Victor Wembanyama sounds less like a basketball player and more like the final boss in a martial arts movie.
Apparently, part of the reason the San Antonio Spurs superstar looks mentally and physically unshakable in the NBA is because of time connected to the legendary Shaolin Monastery.
Regular NBA players spend offseasons working on jump shots and lifting weights. Wembanyama somehow ended up attached to mountain staircases, monk training, and ancient discipline like a seven-foot anime character preparing for battle.
According to reports, MASTER YAN’AN, who has trained at the Shaolin Temple in China’s Henan province since he was six years old helped shape part of the intense environment connected to Wembanyama’s development.
And honestly, after hearing the details, it all starts making terrifying sense.
The training around the monastery is no joke. MASTER YAN’AN climbed roughly 1,500 stone steps up Wuru Peak to the Bodhidharma Cave thousands of times.
Meanwhile, most people lose motivation halfway through walking up apartment stairs carrying groceries.
What makes the climb even crazier is that none of the steps are equal. Some are narrow, some are steep, some are uneven enough to make your knees start negotiating with you halfway up.
Now imagine a seven-foot-four basketball player absorbing lessons from an environment like that. Suddenly his NBA toughness makes way more sense.
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 said, 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.”
The league is cooked.
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 said. “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.”
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 said. “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 said, was to free your mind from fear and trust your awareness to guide you.
At this stage, Wembanyama is growing beyond basketball. Every week there seems to be another story that makes him sound less human and more mythological.
