TO anyone unfamiliar with his sport, Karch Kiraly's victory at the Huntington Beach Assn. of Volleyball Professionals tournament this summer over the best players in the country might have stirred a Roger Clemens moment. Kiraly is, after all, 44, turning 45 in November.
But to understand the significance of his victory, picture this: Lance Armstrong winning another Tour de France -- in 11 years. Andre Agassi winning a major -- in nine. Jerry Rice not retiring and making a Pro Bowl appearance -- in two. They are among the best in their sports, and they have all defied age. But not yet like this.
Live to 115 and the world wants to know how you do it. Be a top athlete at a late age and there's a similar curiosity, mixed with an almost vulture-like anticipation of the end.
Kiraly's longevity is a powerful convergence of nature and nurture, with the eleventh-hour appearance of a new friend. About three years ago, Orange County-based trainer-coach Mike Rangel was convinced he had a program that would benefit the beach legend. It was based on a Soviet regimen from the 1970s that had been giving track and volleyball teams a noticeable edge; it focused on the eccentric muscle development that is responsible for the legs' explosiveness in pushing off or jumping. Called plyometrics, it had been adapted by Rangel to train his son Steffin and other young athletes.
Kiraly had already been subjected to punishing "jump training," as plyometrics was called then, while preparing for the 1984 Olympics under coach Doug Beal, leaping over lines of chairs and jumping on and off a 3-foot-high box. In his 1999 how-to book on beach volleyball, Kiraly touts a kinder, gentler regimen of plyometrics developed by a San Diego trainer. But it still looks like Russian factory calisthenics compared with the balletic moves that Rangel has put together.
"It's harder to improve once you're in your 40s. I was looking for something new and fresh," says volleyball's most decorated player. Rangel's plyometrics "improved my explosiveness, my quickness in covering the court."
Aging baby boomers can certainly look to Kiraly's longevity for lessons in their own face-off with aging. For every hour Kiraly competes on the court, there's an hour of stretching or plyometric training -- "money in the bank," as Rangel puts it -- that Kiraly draws from. And while the weekend warrior would like to think that just staying in the game is enough, sometimes staying in the game means learning a program to develop strength and flexibility, the best preventive against injury.
