Review: Knockout Home Fitness is a Low-key Switch Exercise Game

If there’s one thing the Switch managed to do, it is continue the tradition of being the console known for fitness games for people looking for another way to exercise. Its use of motion controls and easy of access makes it a natural fit for a title to get people moving. Which is what Knockout Home Fitness does. It isn’t anything revolutionary. But for people looking for an additional way to get moving with new workouts briefly each day, it will get the job done.

Knockout Home Fitness goes with a relatively simple approach. When you first log into the app, you have its three main sections right in front of you. First there is the Personal Training area. This tasks you with completing one challenge each day. This is about a 10-15 minute collection of workouts that can involve an optional stretching section, then a warm up and challenge. Each one of these shows icons representing the kinds of actions you will be performing, show the song that will play, and will involve the chosen trainer briefly explaining what you will do and how it will help. These sections always let you know exactly what you can expect. And you can influence what areas might be the focus, to get a more targeted workout.

The 3-Minute Fitness section is always in the middle. It’s honestly a bit misleading. While you could choose a three minute session, it could also be closer to five minutes. These offer a bit more customization, as you completely define what you will do and how long you will take part in it. Again, it isn’t too strenuous, all of the information is available to show what you’ll be doing, and you have a good degree of control when deciding how the workout will go. You can see the Focus Areas, sorts of actions, music, time it will take to complete the course, and estimated number of calories it will burn. In total, 60 different courses are available here.

Once you get into a session, it feels a lot like taking part in an actual exercise class. You have not only your chosen trainer (there are four options), but two additional, nondescript people will appear alongside them for the workout. All actions take place in time with the beat of a song. All tracks tend to be appropriately dance-y and energetic. None of them are distracting, but there also aren’t any familiar tunes. The bottom of the screen shows clear icons to let you know what sort of movement you will perform and which arm will be involved. In addition to the trainer offering running commentary so you know what to do, text appears at the top of the screen also labeling each move.

As you might expect from a Switch exercise game only tracking arm movements with the Joy-Cons, there’s room for some inaccuracies. I noticed Knockout Home Fitness was great at tracking my arm movements when I would block or punch. But there’s no real way to determine if your other movements are hitting the mark perfectly. Of course, this also means someone could “cheat” the system and only do upper body workouts, rather than full-body ones.

The game also offers some general tracking functions. You can head to the calendar to see how many days you worked out. For each one you did, you can see your workout time, calories burned, and total number of actions. You also register your height and weight when you start playing—data that can be password protected.A graph can also be shown that shows your weekly, monthly, three month, yearly, and three year progress for calories burned, total actions, BMI, and weight. The downside being again that, well, these might not be totally accurate. While the actions will be “right” and perhaps the calories burned too, I suspect the input methods would mean you might not get exact data.

In general, Knockout Home Fitness is a handy exercise game for the Switch and fills a niche. It isn’t as intensive or potentially lengthy as, say, something like Ring Fit Adventure. Rather, it invites someone to show up every day for a few minutes to be active. It isn’t too strenuous or demanding. The virtual trainers are clear and easy to understand. It’s generally peppy, which people might appreciate if they want something to quickly check in with each day.

Knockout Home Fitness is available for the Nintendo Switch.