DH

I think video is a bad move for many aspects of the martial arts. That judgment is in line with an apparently rather large section of budo teachers; both gendai and Koryu, who obviously feel the same way. All too often it detracts from someone’s very real abilities.
Interesting that many -probably most- share the same views of this particular type of display of aikido.
Pre-conditioned reflex, to win and control is laudable.
Pre-conditioned reflex to fall down is laughable.

As Ellis noted with his going from aikido to Koryu–pre-conditioned reflex, particularly to choose to fall down as a response to either tame or even non existent input- should be avoided by anyone in a serious martial pursuit. While he was admonished from the teacher “Why did you fall down, I haven’t down anything to you yet?” And I think the best response is from the top down. Maybe it should be followed by “Here is a way to remain on your feet and neutralize everything I am about to do to you. Now let’s try another.” And so on and so on…till you made a martial artist that is potent on either side of the food chain. In the end it works very well when you do what I have done-go to places or meet people where you have no control over the outcome, and no one is interested in cooperating with you in any way.

That said, I agree with Ellis about demeaning the arts. That’s why many teachers are either extremely cautious or extremely calculating about what they put out there. Were one to assume that all teachers who DO put video out there are cautious or calculating- it then makes a hell of a statement about what we are seeing.
Were they to be casual about it?
Even more so