Todd Hardy

Todd Hardy has studied and taught a variety of martial arts over 38 years and trained with many people from around the world.

Martial Arts Offer Power To Women

What was predominately a male activity has slowly been changing over the last few decades. You now can go into any training hall where martial arts are being taught and often find more women than men practising. Their approach and spirit is often different and the challenges they face can be considerable if there are …

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Tai Chi Requires Many Skills

It is said that in order to draw the silk from a silkworm’s cocoon, you need to do so in a constant smooth movement. If done fast or jerky or changing direction too much, the silk will break. If too slow, it will tangle. So it is with the practice of silk reeling in Tai …

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The Bull Behind the Karate Man

On the island of Okinawa, there is a cultural sport called bullfighting. It is quite different from bullfighting in Spain. There, the bull takes on a man. It is very flamboyant, but it can also be very gruesome. In Okinawa, they pit one bull against another. Two bulls are lead into a ring and put …

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The Way of a Warrior

“I have been many years training in the Way of Strategy, Ni Ten Ichi Ryu, and now I think I will explain it in writing for the first time. “It is now during the first 10 days of the tenth month in the twentieth year of Kanei (1645). I have climbed mountain Iwato of Higo, …

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Moments That Teach

Chop wood, haul water … It was the very simple movement of mopping the floor that taught me the circular motion and energy needed to do a mid-level block. Like the famous scene in the original Karate Kid movie, I discovered the actions and intention of this movement through a non-martial-art practice. If my memory …

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A Scenic Drive Through Martial Arts

With no desire to rush, I chose a different route to Karate class. I saw a small fraction of martial arts being practiced in Whitehorse.

The Way of Harmonious Movement

It is always enjoyable to write about an activity that is well-represented in the Yukon. However, to do some form of justice to Aikido and those who teach it, I will need to touch on the history of this amazing martial art and the founder of it before I explore what is offered here. Aikido …

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Judo Is In a Building Year

I was 12 years old. I was facing a young girl, about my age, with a whole lot more experience in Judo than I had. However, I had the male ego in full swing and thought no way could this girl toss me. Moments later, I was flying through the air only to land on …

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Bread Making is the Metaphor

I was first introduced to Tai Chi Chuan by a karate instructor from Quebec. We had brought him to the Yukon to teach Karate to us and ended up spending half our time learn the long form of the Yang style. This has become fairly common with many of the Karate people I practised with. …

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Bread Making is the Metaphor

A few weeks ago, I was involved in a discussion about bread making. No, I do not mean those bread making machines you can buy at your local store, but bread made by hand. I remember as a child my mother and her sisters getting together to do the fall harvest. They would bake bread, …

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Sumo Life: Upstairs, Downstairs

PART 2 of 2 So, what does the life of a professional sumo wrestler look like? Sumo wrestling is highly organized and rules are strictly enforced through the stables that most belong to. Rules must be followed and each wrestler is granted privileges based on their rank within the organization. Ranking can be separated into …

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Judo: The Gentle Way

Since Judo became an Olympic sport, it would be hard to find someone that has not heard of it. Judo is one of the most popular martial arts in the world today. What many people don’t realize is Judo is not an ancient martial art but came about through one man’s efforts and vision. Judo …

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A Multi-Style Training Approach

There is a wonderful little book called Moving Zen written by C.W. Nichols. It tells the story of his training and living in Japan. A few years ago, I met him and spent time talking about his book, his present activities and some of the challenges he faced in his training in another country. One …

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An Evening That is Different

On a cold and snowy evening in the Yukon, people and children come together in a small gymnasium. Children surge into the building followed by the parents, expressing relief from the weather outside. The unique mystical twilight has been encroaching for the last half hour. When they leave it will be dark. Over the next …

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The Many Faces of Martial Arts

What does the name “martial arts” bring to mind? For many, it is fighting and whatever form that takes. To others, it evokes oriental mysticism with people dressed in strange clothes doing strange things with their bodies. And, to many, their vision of it is based on movies which depict a lot of acrobatics and …

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