The Nintendo Switch’s new fitness game punched me into shape

My body was having a rough week.

The trouble started on Sunday when I somehow managed to injure my foot so badly by simply going for a long walk that I couldn’t put weight on it for two days. I got it working well enough on Tuesday so I could go to a concert, but four hours of standing did a number on my legs. To make matters worse, I had a messenger bag over my shoulder throughout the night, which translated to even more pain by the time I got home.

It was time to admit it: My 35-year old body isn’t what it used to be.

As if by divine intervention, I returned home from the concert that night to find a code for Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer sitting in my inbox. The Nintendo Switch’s latest fitness game encouraged players to move their body with daily exercise routines, complete with stretches and motion-controlled punches. With my shoulder throbbing from the weight of a heavy bag on it all night, I made a decision. It was time to adopt a daily workout, and Fitness Boxing 3 was right there.

Punch and jab

Fitness Boxing may be the most prolific first-party Nintendo Switch series that you don’t know about. Its first installment released in 2018 as a spiritual continuation of the Wii’s Shape Boxing games. Since then, it has gotten multiple sequels and spinoffs, including a Hatsune Miku-themed game. That makes Fitness Boxing 3 the fifth game in what’s nearly become an annualized series for Nintendo. Its actual contents need far less explanation as it’s less complex than Ring Fit Adventure: punch, jab, and weave along to music using the Joy-Cons and track your daily results.

In my moment of physical despair, I decide to boot it up late one night and give it a spin. I’m introduced to my personal trainer, the overly enthusiastic Lin, who walks me through the basics. It’s all straightforward and easy to pick up. As elevator muzak versions of songs like Viva la Vida play, icons move up the screen denoting what kind of punch I need to hit on beat. A red circle is a simple jab, while an orange one denotes a left or right hook. As the music plays, I’m encouraged to bounce my feet on the beat while holding a firm stance.

I pass my first workout with flying colors. That’s thanks to some precise (and very forgiving) motion controls that give my swings a more tactile impact. It feels like I’m hitting a punching bag when I get the snappy feedback of a “Perfect” score. In fact, it’s so precise that I complete my first week of workouts without missing a single hit. It becomes a point of pride during my sessions as I’m determined to land three stars every time with all perfect hits. That’s the kind of gamification that makes fitness games so effective; high scores are a great motivator.

While I have a blast nailing punching patterns, I’m skeptical after my first two days. It’s fun to swing my fists, but is this really a workout? Lin encourages me to engage my core and shoulders while punching, and some warm-up stretches target other areas of my body, but it doesn’t really feel like exercising at first. Would this really whip me into shape?

I learned that answer the hard way on day three.

After two overconfident sessions, I woke up on Thursday morning with my shoulders and forearms throbbing. The aches stayed with me throughout the day, reminding me how out of shape my arms really were. I would no longer doubt the power of Fitness Boxing. Lin was my master now, and I would do exactly as she said to get my muscles in shape.

While on the topic of Lin, Fitness Boxing 3’s most oddly unsettling feature is its personal trainers. At times, it feels like I’m inadvertently playing a dating simulator. There’s a toggle in the trainer menu, where I can pick from a few different male and female characters, that lets me choose how nice they are to me. If I give them free reign to compliment me, my sessions are filled with overbearing compliments that make me feel like I’m getting hit on. Adding to that is a “bond” system, where working out with trainers levels them up and unlocks special one-on-one sessions that almost feel like dates. It’s a little uncomfortable, but so absurdly hilarious too.

Of course, I have no time for flirting. I am here to get huge. After a rest day (or two), I get back to the grind and bump up the length of my workouts. Instead of punching for 15 minutes, I dial it up to around 30. More advanced moves like uppercuts start to slowly seep into my playlist, prompting me to work out different parts of my body while the goofiest cover of Sugar, We’re Going Down loops for 12 minutes. I become so locked in that my trainer turns me into a sucker. She goads me into increasing my workout length with harder drills, and I accept her proposal every time. At the end of one particularly brutal day, she suggests that I do one extra speed blitz. I sigh and accept, pushing my aching muscles to their limits. I am currently writing this through an aching right shoulder. Somewhere Lin is laughing at me.

Even with the pain, I feel like I’ve mastered Fitness Boxing after a week. I’ve done hours worth of repetitive exercises and landed thousands of perfect punches. It gets a little boring as a game, but I have to remind myself not to think of it as one. Repeated motions are a necessity, and I’m nailing it when it comes to consistency. I preemptively declare myself the king of Fitness Boxing 3 … until I open a menu detailing the full list of moves.

Jesus Christ.

As it turns out, my painful week of progress had barely shown me Fitness Boxing 3’s depth. Everything I had completed was a basic drill. In more advanced sessions, I could expect to duck and weave diagonally, guard incoming punches, and step back and forth. Those moves would let me focus on much more of my body, alleviating my concerns that these daily workouts would turn me into that character from Lady in the Water with one very jacked arm.

If it’s not clear by now, a game like Fitness Boxing 3 really isn’t something that’s conducive to traditional game testing. You can’t grind your way through it to make a review deadline. Seeing all it has to offer would require me to throw my body into the deep end sooner than I was ready to and risk hurting myself. I can only speak to my slow and steady first two weeks with it, where I mixed in some loose Mitt Drills and seated boxing exercises alongside my daily workouts. I don’t know how long I’ll stick with it, nor can I say if it’s going to turn me into a muscle head anytime soon.

All that I can say is that this is a particularly cathartic way to get your cardio at home. There’s something inherently satisfying about safely throwing a punch and feeling like it has connected on some invisible dummy. Even more than a workout game, Fitness Boxing 3 is just a good outlet for rage at a time where I imagine a lot of people might need it. I’m hitting all my hooks with conviction as I channel all my aggression into my Joy-Cons. Maybe that’ll be enough to keep me coming back for round after round. Who knows? Maybe I’ll feel cocky enough to step into the ring with Mike Tyson one year from now and have my skull cracked like a chestnut live on Netflix. Lin would approve. That fiend.

Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer launches on December 5 for Nintendo Switch.