People who aren't familiar with (their) physiology think its all about muscle mass, when opposite is true. Muscles are by far easiest to build, but then you have whole world of various connective tissues in various joints (tendons, ligaments, fascias etc) that can make or break any competitive sportsman way before muscles come into play.
The problem with all this connective tissue is - training it takes much longer than building muscles or increasing cardio capacity. For 70 year old, that is easily a decade+ of careful preparation / training to get to such level from 0 (which seems wasn't the case for him).
Also, there are 2 basic body types when it comes to flexibility - either flexible people (like me), or rather rigid ones. Us flexible can do ie yoga stuff that takes a decade for more rigid folks to achieve. Drawback is, our joints, when under load, tends to move farther and experience connective tissue issues way more. If you don't respect which type you are, you don't utilize your (remaining) potential.
And so on, this can be discussed for a very long time, our bodies are unique and fascinating on so many levels. They are also very stupid and completely not built for our modern lifestyles. Ie I broke both of my feet in paragliding accident recently, so wheelchair-bound for a while. It takes only 2-3 weeks of not walking and your feet become completely unusable, you lose basic bending capabilities. I guess this comes from more animal times when broken leg meant almost always death sentence.
The problem with all this connective tissue is - training it takes much longer than building muscles or increasing cardio capacity. For 70 year old, that is easily a decade+ of careful preparation / training to get to such level from 0 (which seems wasn't the case for him).
Also, there are 2 basic body types when it comes to flexibility - either flexible people (like me), or rather rigid ones. Us flexible can do ie yoga stuff that takes a decade for more rigid folks to achieve. Drawback is, our joints, when under load, tends to move farther and experience connective tissue issues way more. If you don't respect which type you are, you don't utilize your (remaining) potential.
And so on, this can be discussed for a very long time, our bodies are unique and fascinating on so many levels. They are also very stupid and completely not built for our modern lifestyles. Ie I broke both of my feet in paragliding accident recently, so wheelchair-bound for a while. It takes only 2-3 weeks of not walking and your feet become completely unusable, you lose basic bending capabilities. I guess this comes from more animal times when broken leg meant almost always death sentence.