A doctor of medicine and surgeon by training, in 1930 he became the first Filipino to gain a physical education degree from the United States.

[1] Reaching his twenties, he enjoyed his first experience of high level sport in 1911 when he was named in the all-Filipino national baseball team as a center fielder.

[1] He attended the Springfield College in Massachusetts in the United States where he graduated in 1920 with a bachelor's degree in physical education.

Still a student, he returned for the 1915 Games held in Shanghai and defended his shot put title with an improved throw of 10.91 m (35 ft 9+1⁄2 in).

[4] Ylanan competed one further time at the competition, playing as catcher for the Filipino baseball team at the 1917 Far Eastern Championship Games.

Working alongside Jorge B. Vargas, the organisation's president, his achievements during his tenure included a ten-year national plan for athletic centres to train youths and the building of the Rizal Memorial Sports Complex on the old Manila Carnival grounds as the main stadium for the 1934 Far Eastern Championship Games, which was the tenth and final edition of the competition.

He documented the continued rise of basketball in the Philippines in the 1940s,[9] as well as the development of baseball in the country on which he remarked that it "seemed to fill a long-felt want with the Filipino".

[3] His wife Carmen Wilson Ylanan finished the work entitled The History and Development of Physical Education and Sports in the Philippines and it was published in 1965, which a second edition with further additions by her following in 1974.