part0008

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” — Sun Tzu

In Japanese, the term, go no sen means blocking and riposting (receiving an attack and then striking back). It is a common method of martial arts practice, one that is great for training. At the beginning of a practitioner’s martial arts adventure, go no sen looks simple. When the attacker initiates a blow, the defender stops the attack and then returns fire.

This dance has 3 stages: attack, block, and counter. The issue in real life is that unlike in the training hall the attacker doesn’t stop. The initial assault is followed up by another attack and then another in rapid succession, oftentimes making for an overwhelming assault. This is not a tick-tock sort of affair, a give-and-take with each person taking their turn. The assailant uses initiative and surprise to gain momentum and successive attacks to prevail.

In the sporting world no boxer when given an opportunity will fail to follow up. A boxer will exploit every opportunity that their opponent presents. The boxer’s goal is to end the event as fast as possible, to win at minimal cost. This is a great example of how sports can mirror confrontations in the real world.

You see, a criminal attacker has a similar agenda as does pretty much every thug or bully we might encounter. These folks are not interested in a fair fight; fighting is simply a means to an end. That means resources or resolution.

When they are trying to gain a resource, criminals prefer an assassination to a fight. That does not mean that they are always trying to murder their prey, but rather that they want to end the fight as quickly as possible without any risk to themselves. Ideally victims never get to fight back, so there’s nothing fair about it. Similarly, people in an emotional frenzy who choose to fight also seek quick resolution, oftentimes a beatdown that makes them feel superior to those who have slighted them.

Be it in the ring, on the street, or pretty much anywhere else for that matter, fights continue until one or both of the parties involved surrenders, is injured to the point where he or she cannot continue to battle, is rendered unconscious, or killed. This means that failure to follow-up can be (and often is) fatal.

Go no sen is good and it is useful for basic training because it helps us learn movement and positioning. Go no sen also stresses fundamentals, building what we in shorthand call muscle memory. It is not, however, much good in a fight.

When we look at higher-level martial artists performing go no sen it appears that they are receiving the attack before responding just like beginners. Without exception, however, they have actually combined a movement within their go no sen , turning it for all intents and purposes into sen no sen (which means intercepting the attack once it is on its way). Using this method, they move from reactive to responsive technique, placing themselves into a strategically superior position. This is the bare minimum we must achieve in real-world confrontations in order to prevail.

The illustration below shows the classic three elements of the go no sen pre-attack position. The strike, the block or arresting movement that stops the attack from landing, and then the counter strike. For example, an attacker may start with a head strike which is blocked and then countered with a chest punch.

The diagram below illustrates what should happen with a more advanced interpretation of the technique, however, one which leapfrogs momentum to turn a reactive movement into a responsive technique. The gray area shows what is unseen by the casual observer, the shadow adjustment that moves from go no sen (reactive initiative) to sen no sen (simultaneous initiative). This is where a change of position leapfrogs the attacker’s initiative, assuring that the defender’s counterattack has a good chance to succeed.

Using the previous head strike example, the defending practitioner might shift slightly offline and forward towards his or her adversary such that movement alone makes the head punch miss. Now what would have been an upward block can become a forearm strike to the head followed by the chest punch, so instead of blocking and riposting we move once and strike twice. This sen no sen interpretation is a massively more effective sequence for real-life self-defense than the back-and-forth that is demonstrated in the exact same drill with go no sen .

Knowing this, videorecord a tandem drill practice session or find a skilled practitioner demonstrating one on YouTube and then watch it in slow motion. Identify the shadow adjustment, the change in position and initiative that makes the application work. Later as you become more accustomed to observing this phenomenon, you can watch free sparring at speed and discover this same shadow adjustment.

When an experienced practitioner wants to counter a surprise attack, he or she will use this shadow adjustment to gain initiative. If you see no shadow adjustment, you are looking at an unrealistic drill, one which fails to honor the vital principle of winning before you go in. This honors Sun Tzu’s admonition such that even when we are ambushed, we can successfully turn the tide on our attacker, winning before we go in.

If we move up the continuum from go no sen (reactive initiative) to sen no sen (simultaneous initiative) we improve our chances of success in a fight, yet the ultimate aim of defensive technique is truly sen-sen no sen (preemptive initiative), which means cutting off an attack before it even starts.

Sen-sen no sen uses an adversary’s “tell” (pre-assault change of energy) to sense that an attack is forthcoming and then cut it short before the threat has the chance to transform his or her mental desire to attack into the physical movement necessary to execute that desire. To the untrained observer, this looks a whole lot like a preemptive strike, yet to experienced practitioners the defensive nature of the application is clear. And, this is precisely what we must strive for in practice.

A common example of this pre-attack indicator many people experience is that someone who was glaring at us with direct eye contact suddenly looks away, or someone who was agitated suddenly becomes calm. Subtler examples may be an abrupt change in the person’s breathing or the sudden development of a pallor or flushing of their face (paling is adrenaline-induced vasoconstriction, reddening is vasodilation). Within moments fists will fly.

It is perfectly acceptable and useful to teach go no sen to beginners, yet for experienced practitioners to practice with reactive initiative is folly. What we practice in the training hall is what we are most likely to do in real life. In order to win, we must train to win. Anything less is unacceptable. In tandem drills, sparring, and kata (solo practice) our focus must always be on controlling initiative in order to prevail in a fight.