100 pushups by sets of 50, or 200 pushups by sets of 20.

[Jersovic]

I hit the plateau at 15 dead hang pull ups a few years ago. I could do one set of 15 dead hang pullups, then a set of 12, then a set of 10, then a set of 8, and then barely none at all. After reading a few articles, I decided to try a new program where you basically never do pull ups to failure. I felt silly doing tiny sets of 3 dead hang pull ups, but after a few weeks when I went to morning PT and our PSG told us to do as many pull ups as we could I surprised myself by doing 22 dead hang pullups -- I had never come close to 20, let alone 22 beforehand.

I know that this technique works for pull ups (although I don't know why, other than overall total volume being greater), but:

Does it work the same way for pushups as well?

[Chrysia]

Smaller, controlled sets almost always build muscle better. There is a limit, but it is more or less proven that maximums are for testing yourself, and series of small sets are for improving.

[MrWiggles]

changing up your workout normally yield positive results, so there is no reason why it wouldn't.

on thing you could try is do 20 pushups as fast as you can 15-30sec rest than do 20 really slow and controlled making sure to get as low as possible (maybe even putting books under your hands) and doing you work out like that up to were you want.

[Ninjabic]

sets of 8-15 using proper form with 2-3 second negatives is optimal in most cases.