Some of my legit excuses are very long arms and thin chest, and pain in my left shoulder.
The pain thing I figured out by shortening my range of motion on pulling moves, which has also resulted in my needing to buy all new shirts one size larger.

The long arms thing I figured out by using maximum legal grip and going lower on my torso, to the 2nd to bottom rib. This finally gave me a groove that felt natural. But still no big sustained gains, nothing like I'm seeing on lower body just by trying harder.
So, no pain, and a natural feeling groove. Time for progress, right? Right?
So I decided to try that strategy we do with pullups, doing many even sets, like 3-3-4-3-4-3. It occurs to me to ask if anybody else has done this or tried it. Today using 195, a couple pounds over body weight I got 5, 5, 5, 4, 3 (fail on 4), 3, 3, 2. With no more pain in the left shoulder, and unable to increase the weight for X reps, or increase the reps for X weight, it struck me as tenable to lengthen the workout and keep doing reps out at the limit of my strength.
Any comments, rebuttals, general discussion?