Dazzler

Had to watch it with sound off so am going with body language.

I've practiced like this many times and its useful but still a long way from real.

In this piece of film , the general absence of any real pre-emptive strikes from the defenders was something that detracted for me.

How many shoves in the chest would you need before perhaps realising that this guy was not going away?

How much of your personal space are you going to concede before headbutting someone?

These guys put up a fence but then let the attacker walk straight through it.

Because of this, I feel it skewed the scenarios a bit resulting in nearly all situations resulting in upright grappling then going to floor.

Only exception was David v Goliath where unusually the little guy selects a target twice his size and then gets rewarded with an outer hock takedown and a squashing.

Having said all that - still a good effort and if this full on committed attack is what you are preparing to deal with then its probably a much better way than the standard tanto defences which are a long long way from fighting.

As is much of Aikido...and I don't mean that as a criticism. For me the positives of not being specifically targetted at this extreme end of training eg A real crisis , outweight the negatives.

But I stress "For me" - everyone else has too choose their own position.

Anyway - just my 2 pence worth. I'm no expert so just saying what I see.

Cheers

D