It works, I don't know why we have become so stiff.
Because if you do, you also have to fly 2000 flights a year to stay competitive, and, you *had* to do a lot of that just to get your airplane through the maneuvers by "helping" it at times, pulling here, holding back there, whipping, etc. Geiseke was one of the ultimate masters of the genre, mostly because (like everyone else) the performance of the airplane was so marginal that you *had* to do it. Flying a Fox 35-powered airplane successfully in the conditions (maybe 20-25 gusty and turbulent) as shown could only be accomplished by someone with the remarkable skills of a Bob Geiseke, and if it wasn't a W/C everyone would have just left the airplanes in the car rather than risk it.
This is one of the huge changes since then - now, you don't have to do this sort of thing, because you have so much performance and predictability from the engine/prop that it never needs anything like all that help. Once that is true, and it was possible to just plant your feet and stand there and still make it, then the set of compromises changes, and optimize around the new conditions. You stand up straight and move appropriately in order to create a repeatable reference frame for the maneuvers. And, this has also changed the approach to success, you cannot approach it the old way, because someone else (or everyone else) will do it a better way.
Note also that some/many people have failed to grasp this very fundamental change, and persist in trying to thrash themselves doing it the way they did it in 1966, and then become mightily frustrated when it doesn't work out. MANY more people are competitive than there used to be, and stuff like this is why.
Brett