something like this  

If I read your post correctly, you mean something like this

pushing  

In general, ---etc is not a good idea, because black is pushing from behind. If you keep it up like that, white is constantly ahead of you, and may chose to bend around (hane) on the front of your stones (eg: at a instead).

jumping  

Usually, something like is better, jumping ahead. Now and are pushing from behind, and maybe black will hane in front.

jump, cut  

The risk of , however, is that white will cut like this. Whether this is possible depends on the surroundings (eg: is the edge of the board nearby?)

knight's move  

If you think that the cut is too dangerous, instead of the first jump, you can play this knight's move jump of . Now - might follow. This is better than pushing from behind.

knight's move  

Even with the knight's move, white can still cut. But this cut is much weaker than the previous one. In the previous cut diagram, and and - were separated in three groups. Here and are connected, so black only has two groups to worry about (- and -).

If even this cut is too much for your position, then you are truly in a weak situation, and perhaps there is nothing for it but to push from behind (sometimes bad moves are your only option).