I'm not sure I understand why you're trying to game the 401(k) in isolation.
Your overall retirement plan should be a single plan which takes into account all the various accounts (as well as future expected additional cash-flows like the pension).
Now, the accounts where you are responsible for managing the investments - put them all together on a single spreadsheet and figure out your asset allocation.
Now, do you have a target allocation in mind? If not, before you mess with things, figure that out. You seem to be trying to time something here - you got out of bonds because they didn't preform well and jumped into international stocks. That was a losing move. Now you've jumped from internationsl stocks into cash because, well, because once again, you've bought an asset class just in time for it not to perform well. This is a losing game. Stop jumping and start with a plan. Then follow the plan.
And that's why it's called gambling rather than investing. If you want to win in the long run, fold that account into the bigger retirement plan and stop gambling with it.
Nobody's saying that. What we are saying is that different asset classes move in different ways at different times. Rather than trying to be in just the right one at the right time - which nobody knows how to do - we are saying diversify amongst asset classes and rebalance periodically if one of them outperforms the others or underperforms the others significantly. In the long run, a balanced portfolio managed to a target allocation with *no* attempt to time the market is much more likely to do well than what you've been doing.
There's no "lock" in. You have losses. They're already locked in by the fact that they've happened. Your future investment plan shouldn't depend on your past mistiming. Stop trying to get into the right thing at the right time. Get into the right thing(s), keep an eye on the long-term, and keep in balance.
If your plan says you should have X% in bonds, get yourself to the point where you do have X% in bonds. Maybe do so in an incremental fashion (if you don't have enough, make new additions to the portfolio into whatever you don't have enough of). The faster you make the move, the more you have to lose if the timing is off -- but if you keep trying to time things just right, you are more likely to not actually get it done.
Now there are some things you can do to try to moderate some of the risk. For example, within the bond universe, some parts look (to me) more overvalued than others. And there are concerns about when the Fed is going to start pushing interest rates up - frankly I'd thought they were going to go up sooner, but it looks like they've committed to keeping (at least the ones the government controls directly - which is really just the short-end of the curve) rates very low for the next couple of years.
Nevertheless, trying to time the bond market (ie. go short before rates go up, go long before they go down) is at least as difficult as trying to time getting in and out of stocks. So be careful with trying to be too smart here.
But keep an eye on the big picture. If you have more conservative investments in account A and more aggresive investments in account B and account B has underperformed, that doesn't mean you have to change account B - it means you need to make sure that your plan incorporates both A and B at the same time. Maybe you really should have your 401(k) all in equities - do you have an IRA which is all bonds? Stop looking at the 401(k) in isolation and start looking at the bigger picture.