For some reason, negative chin-ups with one arm crept into my thoughts. I spent about one tenth of one second lowering myself from a chin-up hold and letting go with one hand. A bit abrupt. So today I was reading some sites, one in particular very helpful, full of warnings about undue stress on shoulders and elbows, etc. And some of them mentioned assisted negatives and showed some elaborate pulley and belt mechanisms when it hit me: that’s exactly what that step-bar on a couple of dip and chin-up machines in the gym are: they are assisted pull-ups, chin-ups, dips, etc., but I was too macho ever to use them. So I tried it today and it works well except I didn’t use enough weight so I came all the way down a bit abruptly and worried about pulling on my socket, but it seems OK.
One of the sites said it could take a year to do this right and you should start off only when you can do 15 pull-ups. I’m at 5.