Perpetual motion

Bob Handelman

Matisse Madden teaches pilates classes in one of the gym’s exercise rooms. View full image

Bob Handelman

Matisse Madden teaches pilates classes in one of the gym’s exercise rooms. View full image

Bob Handelman

Joshua Colon ’10, a trainer who cofounded Payne Whitney’s personal training program, works with combat ropes—a popular new workout tool—in the Israel Fitness Center. View full image

Bob Handelman

Joshua Colon ’10, a trainer who cofounded Payne Whitney’s personal training program, works with combat ropes—a popular new workout tool—in the Israel Fitness Center. View full image

Bob Handelman

On the floor of the John J. Lee Amphitheater, varsity basketball players Roxy Barahman ’20 (left) and Alexandra Maund ’19 scrimmage during practice. View full image

Bob Handelman

On the floor of the John J. Lee Amphitheater, varsity basketball players Roxy Barahman ’20 (left) and Alexandra Maund ’19 scrimmage during practice. View full image

Bob Handelman

In the fifth-floor dance studio, Yale Ballroom Dance Team members Ariel Sánchez ’19 and Melissa Kropf ’19 prepare for an upcoming competition. View full image

Bob Handelman

In the fifth-floor dance studio, Yale Ballroom Dance Team members Ariel Sánchez ’19 and Melissa Kropf ’19 prepare for an upcoming competition. View full image

Bob Handelman

When you can’t get a boat on the water, the rowing tanks at Payne Whitney are the next best thing. These rowers, with Robert Baines ’23PhD in the foreground, are novices on the Yale Graduate Crew, a club started by the School of Management and now open to all graduate and professional students. View full image

Bob Handelman

When you can’t get a boat on the water, the rowing tanks at Payne Whitney are the next best thing. These rowers, with Robert Baines ’23PhD in the foreground, are novices on the Yale Graduate Crew, a club started by the School of Management and now open to all graduate and professional students. View full image

Bob Handelman

A pickup basketball game is just one of the many activities that go on in the vast Lanman Center, added to the gym in 1999. View full image

Bob Handelman

A pickup basketball game is just one of the many activities that go on in the vast Lanman Center, added to the gym in 1999. View full image

Bob Handelman

Alex Chinn ’19PhD leaps for the ball in a pickup volleyball game at Lanman with Cody Musselman ’21PhD and Hector Peralta ’23PhD. Besides being regulars at open gym night, they also play in the graduate-and-professional-student intramural league. View full image

Bob Handelman

Alex Chinn ’19PhD leaps for the ball in a pickup volleyball game at Lanman with Cody Musselman ’21PhD and Hector Peralta ’23PhD. Besides being regulars at open gym night, they also play in the graduate-and-professional-student intramural league. View full image

Bob Handelman

Olivia Jorasch ’21 executes a basket toss at a practice of the Yale cheerleaders. Jorasch says her team is mostly first-years who, like her, had never done cheerleading before. “We’ve improved a ton in the past few months and I’m excited to see how much better we can get,” she says. View full image

Bob Handelman

Olivia Jorasch ’21 executes a basket toss at a practice of the Yale cheerleaders. Jorasch says her team is mostly first-years who, like her, had never done cheerleading before. “We’ve improved a ton in the past few months and I’m excited to see how much better we can get,” she says. View full image

Bob Handelman

Like other outdoor teams, the women’s club soccer team retreats to Lanman in the winter to keep up their skills. That’s Francine Rios-Fetchko ’20 (left) and Daphne Martin ’19 practicing their footwork. View full image

Bob Handelman

Like other outdoor teams, the women’s club soccer team retreats to Lanman in the winter to keep up their skills. That’s Francine Rios-Fetchko ’20 (left) and Daphne Martin ’19 practicing their footwork. View full image

Bob Handelman

Friends and fellow fencers Michelle Nam ’20 and Anna Zhou ’20 like to run on the track in the Lanman Center because, says Nam (right), “we can talk and catch up while getting a workout.” View full image

Bob Handelman

Friends and fellow fencers Michelle Nam ’20 and Anna Zhou ’20 like to run on the track in the Lanman Center because, says Nam (right), “we can talk and catch up while getting a workout.” View full image

Bob Handelman

Tasneem Islam ’18MEM (center) leads a group that performs the Punjabi folk dance known as Bhangra, which Islam describes as “very high energy, with musical beats reminiscent of hip hop.” The dancers are working with traditional props called saaps. View full image

Bob Handelman

Tasneem Islam ’18MEM (center) leads a group that performs the Punjabi folk dance known as Bhangra, which Islam describes as “very high energy, with musical beats reminiscent of hip hop.” The dancers are working with traditional props called saaps. View full image

Bob Handelman

Mohammed Essa (center), a physician doing a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiology, lifts weights, swims, and boxes at the gym. “PWG is a happy place for me,” he says. View full image

Bob Handelman

Mohammed Essa (center), a physician doing a postdoctoral fellowship in cardiology, lifts weights, swims, and boxes at the gym. “PWG is a happy place for me,” he says. View full image

Bob Handelman

Yan Ockzowicz ’19 guards the goal at a regular Wednesday scrimmage of the water polo club team. View full image

Bob Handelman

Yan Ockzowicz ’19 guards the goal at a regular Wednesday scrimmage of the water polo club team. View full image

Bob Handelman

Among the newest and most popular intramural sports is pickleball a racquet sport somewhere between tennis and badminton. In the foreground are Benjamin Franklin College’s Spencer Hagaman ’21 and Katelyn Toland ’21. View full image

Bob Handelman

Among the newest and most popular intramural sports is pickleball a racquet sport somewhere between tennis and badminton. In the foreground are Benjamin Franklin College’s Spencer Hagaman ’21 and Katelyn Toland ’21. View full image

Bob Handelman

Varsity fencers have their own salon on the seventh floor of the gym. Sparring here are (left to right) Isaac Shelanski ’20, Avery Vella ’18, Malcolm Miller ’20, and Jonathan Xu ’19. View full image

Bob Handelman

Varsity fencers have their own salon on the seventh floor of the gym. Sparring here are (left to right) Isaac Shelanski ’20, Avery Vella ’18, Malcolm Miller ’20, and Jonathan Xu ’19. View full image

Bob Handelman

For more than ten years, Squash Haven has brought students from New Haven schools to Payne Whitney’s Brady Squash Courts to learn the game. The program currently has 100 students in grades 5 through 11. Here, Squash Haven instructor John Dewitt (rear) works with Yasmin Velasquez (left) and Rose Rodriguez. View full image

Bob Handelman

For more than ten years, Squash Haven has brought students from New Haven schools to Payne Whitney’s Brady Squash Courts to learn the game. The program currently has 100 students in grades 5 through 11. Here, Squash Haven instructor John Dewitt (rear) works with Yasmin Velasquez (left) and Rose Rodriguez. View full image

Bob Handelman

Ann Cowlin (right) is shown here teaching a ballet class, but she is best known for creating a program called Dancing Through Pregnancy, which she has taught at Yale since 1981. Her program is now taught around the world. View full image

Bob Handelman

Ann Cowlin (right) is shown here teaching a ballet class, but she is best known for creating a program called Dancing Through Pregnancy, which she has taught at Yale since 1981. Her program is now taught around the world. View full image

Bob Handelman

Players on the varsity volleyball team, which shared the Ivy League title this year, warm up before practice in the Lanman Center. View full image

Bob Handelman

Players on the varsity volleyball team, which shared the Ivy League title this year, warm up before practice in the Lanman Center. View full image

Bob Handelman

You can find martial artists practicing kendo, aikido, karate, taekwondo, and kickboxing at the gym. First-semester taekwondo student Ana Borja ’20 is landing a glancing blow with her flying sidekick technique as coach John T. Wong holds the target. View full image

Bob Handelman

You can find martial artists practicing kendo, aikido, karate, taekwondo, and kickboxing at the gym. First-semester taekwondo student Ana Borja ’20 is landing a glancing blow with her flying sidekick technique as coach John T. Wong holds the target. View full image

In 1994, when Yale was still suffering from budget problems and the effects of years of deferred maintenance on its buildings, administrators floated the idea that Yale might be better off without Payne Whitney Gymnasium—the 16-level, 640,000-square-foot building that had served the university since 1932. Tearing the gym down, it was noted in this magazine, “would actually be less expensive than renovating the present structure.”

Happily for the fans of the improbable neogothic behemoth sometimes called the “Cathedral of Sweat,” Yale opted for renovation and expansion. A major addition, the Lanman Center, provided an indoor running track and four full basketball courts. A new squash center and fitness center were worked in, along with a varsity weight room. Today, the gym has a lot more to offer than it did 20 years ago. But it’s still as quirky as ever. Where else do gymnasts tumble beneath gothic rose windows?

Although some of us may have once thought of the gym as the province of varsity athletes, it has become a destination for students, visitors, faculty, and staff of all kinds in this fitness-conscious age. Between 1,700 and 2,000 check into the gym every day, which makes for about 500,000 check-ins per year (including 250,000 at the Israel Fitness Center, the PWG equivalent of your local Planet Fitness). They’re there to swim, to lift weights, to run a few miles on a treadmill, to play some pickup basketball, to participate in one of Yale’s 52 club sports, to drill with their ROTC units, to play intramurals for their residential colleges or schools, to work out in group exercise classes (175 each year), to play squash, pickleball, water polo, or table tennis, and to learn ballroom dancing, martial arts, or Indian dance. And much more.

Just walking the halls and watching it all is a bit exhausting. You may feel the same way when you see Bob Handelman’s photos—taken over three days last November—in the slide show above.

For Anthony “Duke” Diaz, who oversees the gym and its offerings as senior associate athletic director, all that activity is music to his ears. Diaz has his office on the fifth floor, down the hall from a suite of well-used exercise rooms. The gym is busy from six in the morning till eleven at night on weekdays, but things really get going in the late afternoon. “We work all day up here,” says Diaz, “and just about the time we’re getting tired out and ready to go home, you start hearing people shouting and running around. And you think ‘Yeah. This is what it’s all about.’ Maybe I should change my hours.”