beating the seat
Blacksheep
The USAF, I believe, used to teach beating the seat on it's non-Martin Baker types ( seem to remember seeing a USAF film on the subject in around 1980), and certainly when Neil Armstrong ejected from the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle in late 68/early 69 he is on record as trying to beat the seat :
"I always thought I might be able to match the automatic system, but I found out that when I was reaching for the D ring the automatic system had already fired"
As a user of one of Martin Bakers older models IMHO on those it was a non-starter - on ejection you are, in sequence, kicked very hard in the backside, have your head rammed between your knees as umpteen g are applied by the rocket pack and in all probability thrust into a roaring gale....and also generally smacked around a lot. It would be the rare individual who could sit there immediately after burn out and go straight into the manual separation drill. Added to which on the older MB seats the first action in the drill (pulling the manual separation handle) neatly disconnects you from the drogue chute (which is attached to the top of the seat) which you need to extract the main chute PDQ if at low level. So in a nutshell, on the older RAF seats you were not taught to beat the seat, with good reason.