And just like that it is the final week of the Open, and our favorite Mr. Castro has lived up to his promise by giving us something we've never seen before - a choose your own adventure, if you will. I'll be giving you guys my thoughts shortly, but I'll be totally honest that this workout is a wildcard. There will be thousands of different variations done over the weekend, and we might not know the best until it's all said and done.

The Workout

40 Ring Muscle-ups

80 Calories Row

120 Wall Ball Shots

Time Cap: 20 minutes

*May be partitioned in any way

Right off the bat I think of the various Murph strategies - Pull-up Saver, Push-up Saver, Leg Saver, etc. Obviously the cool thing is that we can tailor the rep scheme to your specific strengths and weaknesses. Let's break it down:

Even Across the Board

If you are pretty even across the board, then it might make sense to break this into a set amount of rounds that you can knock out, such as 5 rounds of 8, 16 and 24 or 4 rounds of 10, 20 and 30. Another strategy could be a descending rep scheme where you'll start off with a few sets of 10, 20 and 30, then go to 8, 16 and 24, and then finish with sets of 6, 12 and 18. Sometimes the descending reps helps you to keep pushing as the workout goes on.

Arm Saver

If the muscle-ups are going to be a limiter for you, then it would make sense to break them into smaller sets right off the get go. But the beauty of this workout is that we don't have to stand around and wait while we recover, we can just go to the next movement. So, maybe a rep scheme like this: 5 rounds of 4 muscle-ups, 16 cal row, 4 muscle-ups, 24 wall balls. This should help minimize the time we are just staring at the rings. 

Leg Saver

If you are a lightweight who is excited to finally see the rings, but not so excited at the prospect of a whole lot of rowing and wall balls, we could implement a leg saver strategy. The rower has the most transition time and is the easiest to pace, so it doesn't make sense to add more sets of the row than necessary. That mean's we'd want to split the WBS into sets. If you are disciplined, and limit transition time, it shouldn't hurt you very much in terms of wasted seconds. A potential rep scheme could be 5 rounds of 8 muscle-ups, 12 wall balls, 16 cal row, and then another set of 12 wall balls.  

The Over-Thinker

My personal favorite, because I'm biased and created it myself, is a combination of all three - it breaks up the muscle-ups and wall balls into manageable sets, and has a descending rep scheme. The key is that you can't rest for long and you have to be able to keep moving. The rep scheme is as follows: 2 rounds of 5 MU, 16 cal row, 13 WBS, 3 MU, 12 WBS then 2 rounds of 4 MU, 13 cal row, 10 WBS, 3 MU, 10 WBS then 2 rounds of 3 MU, 11 cal row, 8 WBS, 2 MU, 7 WBS. If any of you guys try it, let me know if it works!

Of course, you might end up on the rower like Andrew wondering if you made a terrible mistake - LOL