New Beginner Boxing Workout That Drills One Combo at a Time

“Can you add more video to the app?” We get that request a lot, mostly from people who are new to boxing. When you only learned what a jab is last week, a voice calling out “1 - 1 - 6” can feel like it’s going a bit fast.

So we built a workout around it. Simple Repetitions is now in the Shadow Boxing App: 26 minutes of shadow boxing where you get one combo at a time, with a coach throwing it on screen while you work.

How a round works

The workout is 10 rounds of 2:10, with 30 seconds of rest between them. Every round follows the same pattern:

• The app sets the rules at the start: you’ll get one combo to focus on for a while. Shadow box as usual, but when you punch, throw only this combo.
• A combo appears, for example 1 - 6 with “Jab - Rear uppercut” spelled out under the numbers, and a video of the coach throwing it plays behind the timer.
• You stay on that combo for about 45 seconds. Move, throw it, reset your guard, move, throw it again.
• The app tells you to switch, and you start over with a new combo. You’ll usually get two or three per round.

The combos come from the app’s technique catalogue. Most are short and built on the jab and cross. A few add a hook, an uppercut or a shot to the body, and a couple put a slip or a step back in the middle. The app avoids repeating combos too close together, so over 10 rounds you see a good part of the list.

How long you stay on each combo depends on the intensity. The default switches roughly every 45 seconds. On Light you get just over a minute with each combo, and on Max effort it moves on after about 35 seconds. You can change it by opening the workout in the editor.

Why one combo at a time

A regular round of callouts asks a beginner to do two things at once: remember what the numbers mean, and throw them with decent form. Most people let the form go. They get the right punches out in roughly the right order, and that’s it.

With a single combo on repeat, the first few reps are slow and you’re still thinking. By the tenth rep you’ve stopped wondering which hand goes first and you start noticing the details, like turning the rear foot on the cross or bringing the jab back to your face before the uppercut leaves. That’s how muscle memory gets built. We’ve written before about why drilling a few combos beats memorizing a hundred, and this workout turns that idea into a session.

It also makes shadow boxing itself less awkward. Many beginners don’t know what to do between punches, so they stand still, throw, and stand still again. Having one combo to come back to gives the round a shape. You move, throw it, move, throw it, and the moving part slowly starts to feel normal.

About the video

We’ve been fairly opinionated about video during workouts. Most sessions in the app hide it once the round starts, and we explained the reasons in the article on why the video disappears: staring at a phone lifts your chin, plants your feet, and turns you into a slightly late copy of the coach.

That still applies here, and it’s the main limit of this workout. Where it helps is the learning stage. If you’re not sure how the rear uppercut is supposed to look, a quick glance at the coach answers it faster than any description. Check the video once or twice when a new combo comes up, then look away and box.

The coach in the video stands in place so you can see the technique clearly. Don’t copy that part. The app reminds you of it early in each round, and before most switches you’ll hear a cue like “Step back after your combo” or “Move your head after throwing”. A few things that help:

• Put the phone somewhere you can see it with a glance, without dropping your head. A shelf or a chair a few feet away works better than the floor.
• Warm up before you start. The workout has no guided warmup, so do a few minutes of a simple warmup routine first.
• Throw the first reps of each new combo slowly. Speed can come once the order is automatic.
• Once a combo feels comfortable, stop looking at the screen until the next switch.

Who it’s for

Simple Repetitions is listed for all levels, but we built it with beginners in mind. If you know the six punches and what the numbers mean, it’s a good step before workouts where the callouts change every few seconds. It’s also part of the A week of boxing (beginner) program, on the Building muscle memory day.

More experienced boxers can use it as a technical day, where the goal is clean reps rather than volume. Forty-five seconds of nothing but 1-2-3-4 shows pretty quickly whether your rear hand still drops when you throw the hook.

This workout exists because enough of you asked for it. If there’s another part of the app where you think video would help, tell us.