The one thing that really helped me get past doing girlie pushups (on knees) was swimming. I would focus on pulling my hands down and toward my chest with power in breaststroke and using my upper back for freestyle. Because I was rehabbing my knee, I only swam for about two months, then slowly added weights back into my routine along with running and cycling.
After that, I was able to increase my amount of pushups by starting off every gym day with alternating pushup to exhaustion, situp to exhaustion, squat with 25 lb plate, up to 5 sets, followed by lat pulldown, more pushups, plank for 1 min x3. I would also do chest press, bent over rows, weighted row (forgot what it's called- sitting row machine with adjustable weights. Usually it's attached to the lat pulldown machine).
I was able to improve my technique by doing 3 sets of diamond, 1 min rest, regular hand position, 1 min rest, wide grip shoulders, 1 min rest, situps to exhaustion, 1 min rest, squats to exhaustion (with a plate). Rest a minute or two and make fun of the basketball players, then go do weights. After about a month, I got really tired of doing this and went back to what I was doing before.
Over the course of roughly 4 months of doing this, I gained about eight pounds while maintaining the same clothing size, then plateaued out at the same weight (keep in mind I am a woman and 5'4", so that's actually quite a bit of weight). I took a protein/recovery supplement with Kre-Alkalyn (the newer version of creatine) recommended to me by my cousin who owns his own supplements store. I imagine if you were taking Kre-Alkalyn and stopped, you would probably lose some muscle weight and appear less toned (if it even works)?
One last tidbit to share- Stew Smith article: be sure to work both sides of your shoulder.
http://www.stewsmith.com/linkpages/pushupbalance.htm
Nobody wants a shoulder injury.
