Muscles need energy to work and they get this energy through chemical reactions (metabolism). The thing is that when your body metabolizes to obtain energy for the contraction of your muscles fibers you get some byproducts that complicate new contractions. Therefore, it is usually much harder to do 100 straight repetitions.
100 pushups straight (or however many your body can handle) rips your muscles up. This way your body knows to repair itself stronger than before so it doesn’t rip itself up again.
100 pushups throughout the day gives your body enough time to recover between the sets and thus not ripping up as much (or at all if your body can handle it).
There are a lot of people on here guessing and citing old research, and I’m afraid I don’t have a definitive answer for you, but I have some places to start looking:
1) “Greasing The Groove:” Pavel Tsatsouline coached the Russian Olympic powerlifting team in the 80’s and is a well-renowned and respected strength coach today. He invented this method (AFAIK), which involves doing a few reps – not to failure – spread out over time all day long. Exactly what you’re talking about with pushups. His powerlifters showed serious results on alt his program and he continues to implement it today. Anecdotally, and similar to another poster here, I was at my strongest for chin-ups when I installed a chin-up bar in my doorway and did a bunch every time I walked through the door. My forearms exploded from that, too. Keep in mind, Pavel is a strength guy rather than a size/mass guy, and this technique is geared as such. To promote strength but not necessarily hypertrophy (muscle size and mass).
2) The old “broscience” method of lifting for bodybuilding was to focus on each muscle group once per week, and beat the ever living tar out of that muscle. Work it to exhaustion, then do some drop sets and work it a little more. Newer research is starting to show that for natural lifters (ie no steroids), frequency and less intensity is more effective. So, lifting each muscle group 2-3 times a week, never to failure. I also recall reading a study (I’m sorry I can’t find it again, I’ll try to look tomorrow when I’m not on mobile) that suggested that experienced powerlifters who did less volume but trained everything each day ended up doing more volume total over a week, and saw better results than the athletes who used a more traditional training program.
Edit: was typing too long and forgot the original question, removed answer #3 because it was irrelevant.
Try doing 100 pushups Monday (all at once or throughout the day). Tuesday do two hundred. Wednesday do three hundred. Thursday do four hundred and Friday do five hundred for a weeklong total of 1500 pushups. I’ve done this before and it’s pretty tough. During the times I’ve done this I did the same numbers of squats. I’m in my early sixties.
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