Pavel is the most famous guy in kettlebells training because he exposed the US to it back in the early 2000’s. What most people don’t know is that he’s also a very knowledgeable strength coach who adovocates heavy barbell work and bodyweight training. We pay attention to him because his ideas of blending barbell for strength, bodyweight exercise for assitance, and kettlebells for conditioning fits what we do perfectly.
One of his favorite methods of increasing people’s pullups or chinups is called “greasing the groove” but it can be applied to other exercises you want to get better at, as well. The idea is practice the movement using low reps very frequently. For example, buy a doorway chinup bar and put it in your office doorway. Every time you pass under the bar, do one chinup or pullup. Over the course of a day, you’ll do a ton of pullups, more than in the average workout, but it will seem easy since you only do one each time. This is a great way to practice the movement and build your chinup skill and muscles.
Another method would be doing small sets of 2-5 between sets of other exercises in your workout. This works very well on leg days, for example. As a trainer, I used to do a set of pullups after every PT session. In no time, I was doing 70-80 a day and this built my one ability to do pullups very quickly. Doing 15 straight was no problem after all that volume.
The exciting thing is that there’s no some small evidence that this “greasing the groove” also helps with fat loss by stoking the metabolism throughout the day. Tim Ferriss wrote about doing small sets of bodysquats throughout the day, and he found this helped him avoid gaining lots of fat even after big meals. So think about adding this to your training and see how it goes.