Equips differently, taking on board extremes of hardy construction (8)
I believe the answer is:
physique
'construction' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'equips differently taking on board extremes of hardy' is the wordplay.
'differently' is an anagram indicator.
'taking on board' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'extremes of' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters) (only the letters at the extremes of the word).
'hardy' with its middle taken out is 'hy'.
'equips' with letters rearranged gives 'psique'.
'psique' going around 'hy' is 'PHYSIQUE'.
(Other definitions for physique that I've seen before include "Person's build and muscular development" , "Shape and size of a person's body" , "Constitution of the human body" , "Bodily type, build, or constitution" , "Form" .)