The cool thing is we Know that Burpees can build muscle! We’ve watched the process occur, and it’s documented with photos, videos and witnesses.
Instead of speculating about how prison guys get jacked with pushups, we can check out the Chong story!
Anyway, I think that if you want to build muscle with bodyweight, you should put the idea of Straight Sets to Failure out of your mind. That’s the fastest way with weights.
But with burpees and calisthenics it seems like you want to avoid failure. Like you build up some fatigue, then instead of pushing to the “finish,” you just linger in that fatigued state. You just keep moving enough to stay under duress for awhile. And it burns and is terrible. And i think that “Metabolic Stress” is what makes you grow.
Just thinking about it is making me queasy.