@roundsquare
It makes a whole lot of sense to alternate. :)
That’s what I do. Endurance/plyometric push-ups on Tuesdays and strength push-ups/dips on Fridays.
Although when you do sets for strength, it helps not just to do the same thing as when you train for endurance, but to add to the difficulty a bit. To make every rep as hard for your muscles as they can handle. For example:
– Put on a backpack full of books or other heavy stuff.
– Elevate your feet as much as you can, by putting them on the edge of your bed or a desk or whatever. The more vertical the angle of your body, the more difficult. (The ultimate version of this are hand-stand push-ups. That’s what body-weight exercise fans do.)
– Do push-ups with just one arm, with the other behind your back. Side note: one-armed push-ups are tough as heck, if my own experiences are any indication.
– Do bench presses instead; lying on your back on a narrow bench and lifting a barbell upwards from two support stands. That’s what most gym people do. (It takes more equipment and it’s dangerous, so I prefer a backpack full of weight plates instead, at least for the time being. You can put more weight on a barbell, though, so later on this might become the best option.)
The idea for strength training is that your muscles have to do a lot of work per rep. It’s recommended to use so much weight that you can only do around five reps per set.
As for doing them every day… I think you’ll get better results if you occasionally go all the way than if you frequently train but go easy on yourself.
Your muscles will develop if they have to do something they’re not strong enough for. You need to activate the innate survival mechanisms in your body that make it build more muscle, and those only kick in under conditions where it seems necessary to become stronger, i.e. when your strength is not enough for the things you do. You need to “convince” your body it needs to become stronger. That’s what training boils down to.
That goes for strength and endurance alike. Your body will improve if you push the against boundaries of what it can do.
À propos, don’t just do push-ups, either. Your body is full of muscles that all want to become stronger.
And since – as far as I know – all human muscles have the same basic structure, my advice is the same for all of them.