I played at Nimbin for a while. We had about 10 players who knew the game and a bunch who didn't - many who couldn't kick or handball.
There was a time early in playing there where a bunch of good players turned up and ... well its Nimbin. There was a bong in the change room ffs. (Tho that isn't unusual in country footy teams from what i've heard.) People didn't take things seriously. After a while this got annoying and a bunch of us spontaneously started making ourselves do push ups when we ****** up. Miss a target, run flat out to the fall of the ball get it to the target and drop for 5 or 10 at the end of the line. I don't even know who started it. It might have actually been me. (Or someone else, I honestly couldn't say. But if someone else did it once and I saw them I would have copied them immediately.)
That year we went from having won one game (in r1 against a brand new team from a RL town and one the previous year) to being undefeated all the way to the GF when a bunch of bathwater drinking idiots went out to a doof the night before the game cos we hadn't lost a game for months and regularly flogged everyone in the comp. Naturally we were 8 goals down at half time and lost by about 3.
None the less when a bunch of us started setting an example at training and not accepting shit standards from ourselves we turned that side around. We didn't even have a full side of AFL players - league and soccer players made up about half the side. And our ruckman was well under 6 2 and the tallest bloke in the side.
With all due respect, I think our boys are training a bit harder than Nimbin.
You can enforce standards of intensity without unduly punishing people for making mistakes which were unintended.
What happened with you blokes was that you collectively decided to up the intensity, and the push ups were means for doing that (in the absence of greater structure). That doesn't mean that it's the way to go when trying to up-skill a team.
I've seen it, when enforced by an 'enforcer/publisher's coach archetype, have the direct opposite effect across numerous sports.
I'd much prefer that when a mistake is made or they haven't hit the skill standard they'd like if they were encouraged to just keep kicking and trying things until they did hit an acceptable standard and work through it.
I honestly don't think a guy coming in breathing fire and brimstone and handing out punishments for genuine errors (rather than lack of intensity) is going to do our boys any good.