[danenania]

It's a range, so 3 sets of between 8 and 12 reps (however many you can manage).

What bodyweight routine are you doing? The main thing to look at if you're working out consistently and aren't improving is your diet. Are you getting enough protein and calories? The general advice is to eat ~1 gram of protein per 0.7 lbs or so of bodyweight, and to have at least a 300 calorie surplus if you want to gain muscle.

Not getting enough sleep or being overly stressed out will also kill progress.

[criddell]

Thanks for the clearing that up. Looking over that page more I really don't have the equipment for a lot of those exercises so I'm going to look for something different.

As far as my sleep goes, it's very good. I'm also not stressed at all.

I have made some progress, it's just been very disappointing. When I started I couldn't do a single pull up and now, 10 months later, I can do two. I'm almost to the point where I can do a reasonable dip as well.

[danenania]

Yeah, pull ups and dips are very 'heavy' bodyweight exercises and very slow to improve at first. For me it was effective to do easier progressions in order to work up to them.

With pull ups, for example, you won't see much improvement from just doing sets of one or two since it's not enough volume, so it's better to do something easier like negatives (where you just do the lowering down part slowly) or just hangs if negatives are too hard. You can also target some of the supporting muscles that may be "blockers" with dumbbells--for me it was the brachialis and brachioradialis especially (the forearm muscles on both sides of the elbow), and also grip strength. I started out with 2 lousy form pull ups, and it took me over 2 months to get up to 5 fairly clean ones this way, but in just the last couple weeks I've gone from 5 to 8, so it seems like progress accelerates once you pass that threshold, at least in my case.

For dips, I found that first focusing on normal push ups and then on diamond push ups, which heavily target the triceps, was very effective.