I can just about do a chin up now -(after a year of trying mind you!)- what helped me the most was practicing chin ups on a smith machine, as well as TRX ropes and barbell preacher curls; which really increased the strength in my biceps... my next hurdle is the pull up! A move every guy I know can do with ease...including two over 60 year old's in my gym...
So here's how you (and I ) can work our way to mastering a pull up:
1) Australian pull up: find a bar low enough for your body to be able to lay horizontal underneath with your heels on the floor or elevated on a platform - place hands shoulder width apart and pull your chin up towards the bar and repeat.
2) Bar hang: bar hanging is an undervalued step towards a pull up. Hand on a bar as long as you can. When you begin to feel stronger you can add small shoulder shrugs in to increase your upper body strength and activate the muscles used during a pull up.
3) Flexed arm hang: once you can easily hang from the bar, the next jump is to hang while keeping you arms in a flexed position. Start with palms facing you and eventually turn up them facing away. Play around with feet hanging or at a 90 degree angle.
4) Negatives: this is about working on the eccentric part of a chin up (and the easiest part) to strengthen the concentric part. Get into a flexed position and lower yourself down as slowly and controlled as possible - reset - and start from the top taking big tests of needs be.
5) Chin up: after practising all of the above you will probably be able to do a chin up - combined with bicep strength training i.e bicep curls, preacher curls... Chin ups use biceps primarily - which tend to be much stronger than lats -whether you're a woman or a man. With an underhand grip ( palms facing you) pull your chin up to a bar while hanging.
6) Lat work: so if bicep training helps you do chin ups then there's certainly no reason why adding lat exercises won't help with pull ups. Great lat movements include lateral raises (bent/straight/leaning - experiment!), lat pull downs and dumbell pull over.
And we're both nearly there!
Only 1/1000000 of the way to being another Frank Medrano...