If you have had a quick glance through the tokuhon you would have seen a section talking about sen (先 せん), which is translated as “initiative”.
Sen is not something that often comes up in training, but while at busen my instructor surprised the group by asking “I want you to do uchi-uke-duki, but using sen“. We all looked at each other - everyone was at least shodan and had heard of sen - and he pointed to a pair of kenshi and said “you try it”.
Around the group we each tried, and at the end he asked “so what is sen?”
Sen, or initiative, is split into 4:
- Sen
- Go-no-sen
- Sen-no-sen
- Ki-no-sen
For these to make more sense I’m going to explain it in a different order to what is usually listed.
Go-no-sen is how we usually practice techniques. The attacker makes his move, you meet the attack and counter. This is often called “machi-no-sen“, or waiting sen. If you were doing uchi-uke-duki then you are waiting in kamae, when the attack comes you deflect it and counter as written as kihon.
Sen is also knows as tai-no-sen, mutual sen. The idea here being that when an attack is made, you counter at the same time. Using uchi-uke-duki this would mean you would be aiming to do gyaku-duki at the same time as the attacker, using uchi-uke to stop the attack.
Sen-no-sen is one of the most simple ones - its taking initiative before your opponent does. To put it basically, its moving first, but the important point being its moving first “knowing” what the other guy is going to do. For example doing uchi-uke-duki when the attacker intends to kick is not going to work out well
Last of all is Ki-no-sen. The first three are “physical” sen, from the opponents physical actions (stance etc) you are able to take initiative. Ki-no-sen is based on their mental actions - which I understand to be their attitude and thoughts. A good example of ki-no-sen techniques are jōhō shikake, jōhō techniques which are used without the opponent having made a move.
So next time you do some training, try using different types of sen - many of the 3-kyu techniques are well suited to this, but you should be able to do it with any gōhō technique in the syllabus.