[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.