Combo Drill: How Fast Can You Throw a 1-2-3?

In the ring, one punch rarely ends anything. Combinations do. Combo Drilltimes how quickly you can react to a cue and land a full 1-2-3, measured by real punches on your Apple Watch. Here's how it works, what research on boxers says about punch timing, and what score to aim for.

How the game works

Combo Drill is in the iPhone app and needs an Apple Watch on your punching wrist. After the countdown and a random wait, the screen flashes red and you fire a jab-cross-hook as fast as you can. Your score is the time from the cue appearing on screen to the watch detecting your third punch. That includes your reaction, the first punch and the two punches that follow.

The watch reads its motion sensors 100 times a second and counts a punch when your wrist's acceleration passes a threshold. Punches must be at least 150 ms apart to count separately, so a single shaky punch can't be counted twice. The watch also keeps its clock in step with the phone's and timestamps each punch at the sensor, so the delay in sending messages between the devices doesn't affect your time. Punching before the cue is a false start, and if you haven't landed three punches within 4 seconds, the rep counts as a miss and repeats.

What a combination is made of

Your Combo time adds up three things:

1. Reaction time:seeing the cue and starting to move. In a study of amateur boxers by Bianco and colleagues (2011), men's simple reaction time on a key press was about 245 ms.
2. The first punch: getting the hand moving fast enough to register.
3. The gaps between punches: how quickly you can reload and fire the next one. This is the part combination training improves most.

Your hand also matters for reaction. Loturco and colleagues (2015) tested 22 elite Brazilian boxers and found they reacted faster with the jab than with the cross. The lead hand is closer to the target and starts first.

What the research says about punch timing

The most detailed measurements come from Piorkowski, Lees and Barton (2011), who filmed ten boxers, from local to European level, with 3D motion capture:

• A straight punch took on average 357 msfrom the start of the movement to contact, and a hook took 477 ms. The variation between boxers was large.
• In four-punch combinations alternating hands, it took about 1.05 secondsfrom the first punch landing to the fourth. That is roughly 350 ms between punches.
• Combinations that repeated the same hand were slower, because the hand has to come back before it goes again.

Those boxers were hitting a bag at full power. In Combo Drill you punch the air, and the watch counts a punch as soon as your wrist's acceleration passes the threshold, not when it would land. Your gaps can therefore be shorter than in the lab.

On measuring punches with a wrist sensor, Kimm and Thiel (2015) used wrist accelerometers under the glove on 16 amateur boxers. Jab speed went up with experience, and cross speed went up with reach. Research groups have since shown that wrist-worn motion sensors can classify punches reliably.

What score to expect

There's no published figure for exactly “cue to third punch”, so this is an estimate from the studies above. A reaction of about 250 ms, 100–200 ms for the first punch to register and two gaps of 250–350 ms each put a trained boxer at roughly 850–1,150 ms.

How to get faster

• Stay loose. Tense shoulders slow down both the first punch and the return. Snap the punches out and back.
• Watch the dots.The three dots on your watch fill as each punch is counted. If one doesn't fill, that punch was too soft to register. Snap it out sharper rather than harder.
• Short and sharp beats big and wide. The watch needs a clear burst of acceleration, not a long wind-up.
• Separate the reaction from the combo. Compare your Combo times with your single-punch Combat Sports reactions. If your reactions are good but your Combo is slow, the gaps between punches are the place to work.

Sources

1. Piorkowski, B. A., Lees, A. & Barton, G. J. (2011). Single maximal versus combination punch kinematics. Sports Biomechanics, 10(1), 1–11.
2. Kimm, D. & Thiel, D. V. (2015). Hand speed measurements in boxing. Procedia Engineering, 112, 502–506.
3. Loturco, I. et al. (2015). A comparative study of specific reaction time in elite boxers: differences between jabs and crosses. Journal of Athletic Enhancement.
4. Bianco, M. et al. (2011). Baseline simple and complex reaction times in female compared to male boxers. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, 51(2).