KIPHUTH'S 'CATHEDRAL OF SWEAT' WHERE 'MR YALE' HELD THE KEY TO GLORY

Cecil M. Colwin

He converted swimmers world-wide to a new system of training.

Whenever I see swimmers doing their land training exercises, I think of my friend, the late Bob Kiphuth of Yale, the acknowledged 'Father of Land Training for Swimmers'.

His full name and title was Professor Robert John Herman Kiphuth, Director of the Payne Whitney Gymnasium, Yale University. But to us the great Olympic coach was plain Bob Kiphuth. But any familiarity, during working hours, ended there. Kiphuth ruled Payne Whitney with a rod of iron.

Any man with more than casual contact with him came away with some of the Kiphuth stamp. He was one of those men you don't forget. Last September at the Pan Pacs in Atlanta, I recalled a veritable Kiphuth kaleidoscope of memories with Peter Daland , who was Kiphuth's assistant in the 1950's.

The essence of charm outside of the gym, Kiphuth's manner changed as soon as he passed through those Gothic portals. Without doubt, Kiphuth was what today's sport psychologists would call an "authoritarian" coach.

Woe betide anyone who had not completed a Kiphuth assignment, or the person who left the steam room door open, or the swimmer who swam without showering first. On one occasion, a swimmer swam down the pool and sat down in the shallow end. "If you want to take a bath, bring a cake of soap with you!" boomed Kiphuth's big baritone voice.

While Kiphuth made many great technical contributions to swimming, his greatest gift to the sport was an abstract one. Through sheer force of intellect and the example he set, he created a new image of the swimming coach as opposed to the then existing one of a bathrobe-clad-"swimming bum." Kiphuth always wore a suit, and herring-bone tweeds were his favorites. On the Yale Campus, his blue fedora hat with its jaunty pheasant feather trimming was his 'trademark.'

The 12-floor Gothic structure was known to generations of Yale students as "Kiphuth's Cathedral of Sweat." He made swimming coaching a well-respected profession. He wrote four books, all of them best sellers. His books on land exercises, "Swimming" and "How to be Fit", converted swimmers world-wide to this new system. In the water, Kiphuth introduced a training method "wind sprints" which the Australians developed into interval training still in use today.

Bob Kiphuth started as a physical training instructor in 1917, and was Professor Emeritus of Physical Educatioin when he died in 1967. His kingdom was the beautiful $20,000,000 Payne Whitney Gymnasium donated by the New York philanthropist of the same name.

Beneath its towers many of the world's greatest swimmers trained in the third floor 50 meter practice pool, then shattered world records in the basement Payne Whitney Exhibition Pool before 1500 spectators in a theatre-type arena. More world records were broken in this pool than in any other pool in the world.

Early in his career, Kiphuth noted that many swimmers had excellent technique but lacked the muscular strength and power needed to follow through in the fatigue stage of a race. He also believed that training on land conditioned swimmers much quicker than an equivalent time spent in the water. While today's gymnasia are equipped with advanced, and often expensive exercise machines, it was Kiphuth's initial concept that was to lay the foundation for the modern development of this important phase of training.

Kiphuth maintained that flexibility was "a decided asset for a swimmer, in fact practically a necessity." Kiphuth's exercises were directed to those muscles mainly involved in the propulsive movements of the arms and legs, and also the muscles involved in providing good body position in the water.

Kiphuth knew more about the human body in motion than any one I've met. Unknown to most swimming people, Kiphuth co-authored an authoritative tome on the diagnosis and treatment of postural defects. His co-author was Winthrop M. Phelps, son of William Lyon Phelps, the great American literary figure, and once voted "Yale's most inspiring professor."

"Lithe, lean and lasting, that's the way I like them", Kiphuth would say as he fine-trained his swimmers in the gym. When I arrived at Yale, early in 1952, to study his methods, I mentioned that I was particularly keen to observe his land-training workouts. As he was sometimes apt to do, Kiphuth pretended to be hard of hearing. "So you are keen to sample my land workouts?" he said, his steel-blue eyes boring right through to the back of my skull. My heart sunk. How could I be so base as to refuse my host's hospitality...?

Within the hour, there I was, five years retired from swimming and never a workout since, clad in nothing but shorts, duly 'signed up' for one long month of torment under a world-recognized master of torture.

Kiphuth appeared through the doorway. "Good afternoon, gentlemen" he boomed in his rich baritone, sounding for all the world like Mr Magoo, the famous cartoon character.. He had changed into what was known as "Bob's gray workout suit", an outfit that resembled a long fleece-lined night shirt.

He had with him his "dual-purpose" bamboo pole. In the gym he used it to tap out the rythym of the exercises. On the pool deck it became a harpoon that prodded swimmers who drifted into their turns.

"Catch, swing, throw", Kiphuth called as we threw the 16 pound medicine ball back and forth to each other in continuous rythym. My partner was John Marshall, holder of every freestyle record from 200 to the mile. Catching John's every throw was like trying to stop a cannon ball, the momentum each time pushing me back several feet. "Catch, swing, throw" Kiphuth kept intoning mercilessly. "Will the young gentleman from South Af-ricker please pick up the rythym?", he said.

Each workout lasted one hour. Twenty minutes of almost non-stop free exercises, twenty minutes of medicine ball work, then twenty minutes on the pulley weight machines. These exercises were cleverly designed, or should I say "diabolically designed" to increase muscular strength and power, endurance and flexibility.

Kiphuth's methods were highly successful. He coached many famous champions, including Alan Ford who was only 5ft 9in, and weighed a sparse 150 lbs, yet became the first man to beat 50 seconds for the 100 yards, thus breaking the great Johnny Weissmuller's 17-year-old record. Other great swimmers such as Olympic champions, Jimmy McLane, Alan Stack, multi-world record holder John Marshall of Australia, Jeff Farrell, and many more, helped Kiphuth's Yale Teams to win 200 consecutive dual meets. Kiphuth was the 1932, 1936 and 1948 American Olympic coach. At the first post-war Olympics in London, 1948, Kiphuth's U.S. Men's team won every event, the only team in history to do so.

Kiphuth became well-known in physical education circles. He was the first editor of "Swimming World" magazine, and was in world-wide demand, making no fewer than 33 overseas trips.

He was like a national god in Japan. It has often been said that he was the father of modern Japanese swimming. On one occasion, when Kiphuth and his American team emerged at Osaka station, over 100,000 people thronged the streets to welcome them.

They overwhelmed him with adulation and fine presents. In turn, he became an authority on the Japanese theatre, the Bunraku drama, the Kabuki dancers, and the Kno puppets...he could discourse for hours on Japanese culture.

Kiphuth was a pocket battleship of a man. He stood only five feet five inches tall but there was really nothing small about him. At a clinic in South Africa, at the age of 70, he gave a vigorous demonstration of his medicine ball exercises.

His bullet head, bull shoulders, and booming baritone voice were part of the Yale scene for exactly fifty years. On a campus of world famous scholars and athletes, he was "Mr Yale".

Kiphuth's achievements are aptly described in his citation on being inducted into the International Swimming Hall Of Fame: "As Athletic Director and Physical Education professor at Yale, as a much travelled ambassador of swimming,. Kiphuth played a key role in sports administration, coordination and politics helping to break down much of the traditional thinking that a coach is a trainer and should be seen and not heard."

REPRINTED FROM SWIMMING TECHNIQUE ISSUE 1996, 32 (4), FEB.-APR.  7-8, WITH PERMISSION BY THE PUBLISHER.

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