What Is Shaolin Kung Fu? The Complete Guide to Its History, Training and Philosophy

Shaolin Kung Fu is the oldest and most influential school of Chinese martial arts, developed over roughly fifteen centuries at a Buddhist monastery on Mount Song in Henan Province. It is not a single fighting style but a complete system: hundreds of forms, a foundation of conditioning drills, breath and internal work, and a meditative tradition that gives the whole thing its purpose. This guide explains what it actually is, where it came from, what training involves, and how it differs from the wushu and Tai Chi it is constantly confused with.

What Shaolin Kung Fu actually is

The most common misunderstanding is that Shaolin Kung Fu is a style, in the way that boxing or judo is a style. It is better understood as a tradition containing many styles. Over the centuries the monastery accumulated an enormous curriculum: barehand forms, weapons forms covering staff, sabre, spear and straight sword, conditioning methods, medical and breathing practices, and combat applications drawn from all of it.

The name is geography rather than doctrine. 少林 (Shàolín) refers to the forest on the Shaoshi peak of Songshan, where the temple was built. Everything that grew there took the mountain's name.

What holds the curriculum together is not a signature technique but a method of building a body. A Shaolin student does not begin with fighting. They begin with stances held until the legs shake, with flexibility and conditioning, with the same basic movements repeated until they stop requiring thought. Only then do forms and applications mean anything.

Kung Fu, gongfu, wushu: the words explained

Three words get used interchangeably in English and they do not mean the same thing. Getting them straight explains a lot of the confusion around the whole subject.

So: Shaolin Kung Fu is a traditional branch of wushu, the word gongfu describes the quality you build by practising it, and competitive modern wushu is a twentieth century sport derived from traditions like it. All three are legitimate. They are simply not the same thing.

Where it came from

The Shaolin Temple was founded in 495 CE under Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei, built for an Indian meditation master named Batuo. Martial practice is not what it was founded for.

The documented turning points come later. In 621 Shaolin monks fought for Li Shimin, the future Tang emperor, an episode recorded on a stele erected at the monastery in 728 that still stands. But that inscription describes monks fighting, not a Shaolin fighting system. The martial tradition as a recognisable body of practice consolidated much later, in the Ming dynasty, when monastic troops served against coastal pirates and military encyclopedias recorded their methods.

We cover the full chronology, including the 1928 burning of the temple and its improbable revival, in the history of the Shaolin Temple, where each claim is weighed against the record.

Chan and Wu: why the meditation matters

Shaolin is a Buddhist monastery first. The martial art grew inside a contemplative institution, and the tradition insists the two are inseparable: 禅武合一 (chán wǔ hé yī), "Chan and the martial arts are one."

In practice this is less mystical than it sounds. Chan (禅), which travelled to Japan as Zen, trains sustained attention and equanimity. Those are the same faculties that let a practitioner hold a painful stance without flinching, repeat a movement ten thousand times without boredom, and stay calm under pressure. The meditation is not decoration attached to the fighting. It is the thing that makes the fighting trainable.

Our guide to Shaolin meditation, Chan and Qi Gong covers the internal side in depth.

What the training actually consists of

A day at a Shaolin school is more repetitive and more physical than most newcomers expect. The components are consistent across schools.

• Jibengong (基本功), the basic skills. Stances, kicks, flexibility, footwork and conditioning. This is the foundation everything else stands on, and it never stops being trained. We break it down in what is Shaolin jibengong.
• Stances. Horse stance (马步, mnjebù), bow stance, empty stance and others, held for time. Nothing exposes a beginner faster, and nothing builds the legs more reliably.
• Forms (套路, tàolù). Choreographed sequences that store technique, teach transitions and build stamina. Beginners typically start with short foundational sets before progressing to longer traditional forms.
• Weapons. The staff first, traditionally, then sabre, spear and straight sword. Weapons are taught after the empty hand foundation is in place.
• Qi Gong (气功) and breath work. Breathing, tendon and internal conditioning practices, trained alongside the external work rather than after it.
• Conditioning and application. Strength, impact conditioning, partner drills and, at many schools, Sanda, the Chinese kickboxing ruleset used for sparring.

What makes Shaolin distinctive

Ask a Shaolin master what separates their art and you will usually get a saying rather than an argument. Two are especially revealing.

拳打一条线 (quán dǎ yī tiáo xiàn), "the fist travels a single line." Classical Shaolin forms move back and forth along one straight line rather than circling a hall. It is an economy principle: power is delivered directly, and the practitioner learns to generate force without needing space to wind up.

拳打卧牛之地 (quán dǎ wò niú zhī dì), "Kung Fu can be practised in the space where an ox lies down." Roughly two metres square is enough. The art was deliberately built to be trainable anywhere, which is exactly why it survives well as a home practice today.

Beyond the sayings, the practical distinctives are the depth of the jibengong foundation, the breadth of the curriculum, and the explicit pairing of external conditioning with internal breath work: 外练筋骨皮，内练一口气, "outside, train tendon, bone and skin; inside, train the breath." We collected and sourced twenty of these training maxims in 20 Shaolin Sayings: The Complete Edition.

Shaolin vs modern wushu vs Tai Chi

These three are routinely confused, including by people selling classes. The differences are real.

They overlap in practice. Many Shaolin schools teach Tai Chi and Qi Gong alongside the external curriculum, and many teach the competitive wushu syllabus too, because that is what Chinese students compete in. A school offering all three is not being inauthentic. Just be clear which one you are actually signing up for.

Lineage, and what "35th generation" means

You will see Shaolin teachers described as 34th or 35th generation disciples. This refers to a generational poem, a fixed sequence of characters in which each generation of ordained disciples takes the next character as the first syllable of their dharma name. Monks of the Yan (延) generation are the 34th; those of the Heng (恒) generation, such as our own Shi Heng Chuang, are the 35th.

It is a marker of ordination and transmission within the temple's lineage, not a martial rank or a measure of fighting ability. It matters because it tells you where a teacher's authority comes from, which is worth checking given how freely "Shaolin" gets attached to schools with no connection to the temple at all.

Is it effective, and who is it for

An honest answer has two halves. As a system for building athletic capacity, discipline, flexibility, mental steadiness and body awareness, Shaolin training is outstanding, and that is what the overwhelming majority of students come for. As preparation for a modern combat sports contest, a traditional forms curriculum on its own is not enough, which is precisely why serious schools also drill applications and spar under Sanda rules.

As for who it suits: essentially anyone healthy enough for sustained exercise. Students at the schools we work with range from teenagers to people well into their sixties, and training intensity is scaled to the individual. No prior martial arts experience is expected or required.

How to begin: three honest routes

• Start at home. The foundations genuinely can be built through a screen: stances, basics, flexibility, conditioning and Qi Gong all come down to daily repetition. The Shaolin Foundations is our structured beginner course, taught by a 35th generation disciple, and our guide to learning Shaolin online covers what does and does not work remotely.
• Go on a retreat. Days to weeks of immersion with real teachers, without relocating your life. Our retreats run in China, Los Angeles and London.
• Train in China. The deepest option: weeks to months at a school near the temple. Start with our complete beginner's guide to training in China, compare schools in our honest schools guide, and check the numbers in our cost breakdown.

Whichever route you take, the first months look the same: stances, basics, patience. That is not a limitation of the beginner curriculum. It is the curriculum.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

Where to go from here

Not sure which route fits you? Get in touch and we will answer honestly.