Like I said I am pretty new to aikido. Your exercise was part of the class warm up? I wouldn't expect to find martial applications in warm up exercises and if these were such then I stand corrected. If they're not then in 99% of the classes I've taken a specific movement has always had a martial application, either by itself or as part of a group of other movements/techniques. I assumed that this would also be the case in aikido (which it has been in the classes I've attended) but evidently it is not so.
Aikido has so many different viewpoints and ways of expression I think I was a bit fast to pass judgment. But I want to train in a martial art and if I had wandered into a class and saw what was in the video without any proir knowledge about aikido then my responce would be is aikido a martial art at all?