This week Tom and Ben are joined by Lucas Hardie of Range of Strength, Canadian coach, former competitive powerlifter, skateboarder, punk bassist, and one of the most thoughtful voices in the movement and flexibility space.

The conversation covers a lot of ground. From why mobility training became so overcomplicated and how to strip it back, to what physical freedom actually means when life gets in the way, to why the best thing you can do when you’re injured is keep moving — just differently.

And somewhere in between all of that, there’s a retro hockey video game where you can give your players steroids.

In this episode:

• Why mobility training became so watered down, and what a minimalist approach actually looks like
• The difference between lacking range of motion and lacking the ability to coordinate movement through range
• Why bubble wrapping clients has held the industry back, and why people just want to train hard
• What physical freedom actually means and why having more options matters most when things go wrong
• Why Lucas moved away from the weekly training schedule, and what a ten day rotation looks like
• The periods where Lucas lost his passion for training and what brought it back each time
• Why the most interesting people in the gym are never the ones whose whole identity is the gym
• There is no finish line, Lucas’s loading screen and the philosophy behind it

Find Lucas:
Instagram: @rangeofstrength
Website: rangeofstrength.ca
YouTube: Range of Strength

Ben's back from Pittsburgh and Tom's no longer talking to himself. Normal service is resumed.

This week Tom and Ben work through five listener questions — some training fundamentals that come up more than you'd think, a question that will resonate with anyone who's ever wondered if they're actually pushing hard enough, and a gym red flag segment that gets surprisingly heated.

In this episode:

• Should you be sore after every session? — why chasing soreness is the wrong goal and what to look for instead
• How do I know if I'm actually training hard enough? — the two camps most people fall into and how to tell which one you're in
• Four exercises to maintain muscle and bone density as you age — Tom's answer for a client in his early 60s who looks a decade younger
• Do you need to track calories to lose weight? — the short answer, the long answer, and why the accuracy of tracking is probably lower than you think
• What's your gym red flag? — Ben gets surprisingly passionate about this one

Plus the would you rather — massive arms with toothpick legs, or massive legs with toothpick arms. Thor vs Tour de France cyclist. The answer is more obvious than you'd think.

Got a question for Q&A Vol. 3? Drop it in the comments on any of our Instagram posts.

Ben's away this week, so you've got Tom solo. And rather than fill the time with a guest or a game, he's gone straight into something that's been coming up repeatedly across coaching calls over the last few weeks.

Five questions. Five real client conversations. And at least one of them is probably going to land for you.

The five questions:

• Does it have to be all or nothing? The dimmer switch analogy and why your floor matters more than your ceiling
• What are you actually optimising for? The client who beat himself up all summer, until Tom pointed out what he'd actually gained
• Why does this matter to you? Finding the reasons that hold when motivation drops
• What are you getting from this behaviour? Why the thing you keep doing probably isn't the problem you think it is
• Am I being intentional? Creating space between the trigger and the habit

No guest, no game. Just five questions worth sitting with.