Weapons in ILC?
 

In my limited exposure I haven't seen anything about weapons. Is there any work done to use or defend against weapons?

My guess is that since I Liq Chuan is not a technique driven or technique accumulating art/system and that most weapons are hand held and thereby extensions of the hand and are used almost exclusively in close proximity (firearms or other ballistics being an exception) the skill, sensitivity and awareness that develops through spinning and sticky hands along with chin na experience should prove to be effective. As for using weapons I have no clue and won't venture a guess.

i remember dave telling me something along the lines of "Sifu thinks that the real skill is in the body".

many of the fillipino arts have the same philosophy, and start you out empty handed. the thinking is, if you can't beat your opponent empty handed, you probably can't do it with a weapon either. (assuming he's armed as well)

or i guess you could say, if you'd lose empty handed, you'd just lose faster with a weapon.\

traditionally i think they trained with the pole in malaysia, but i don't know how much they did.

I agree that the skill is in the body.
Its not that I want to carry a weapon around or anything but I have done a tiny bit of knife work before and its really hard to defend against it. I was curious to know if there's any work on this kind of stuff. I guess not, That's cool. :)

there's a lot of stuff in the phoenix eye / 9 point fist, but none of the stuff is taught outside of advanced training settings.

Sneaky! :D