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Growing your back and building that “V-Taper” is essential for your overall physique. Growing a big and strong back is essential for overall supporting your spine and reducing the likelihood of injuries to your back and helping to improve your posture.
With there being so many different attachments for cable machines it can be difficult to find the ones that work best for you and implement them into your workouts. Each attachment can have different effects on your muscles as they are designed for different muscle groups.
What makes a good cable attachment?
There is not one definitive attachment that is always superior to another. It ultimately comes down to your goals and the variety of different ways that each attachment can target different sections in your back.
Your back is made up by the upper lats and lower lats. These are essentially what make up the “V-Taper” and help stabilize your back while extending your shoulders.
Countless attachments are available and provide different outcomes depending on how they are used. Here are our top 5 cable attachments for the back that every gym should have:
1. Mag Medium Grip Neutral
Mag grips are great for overall back growth as they provide a variety of sizes for different circumstances. These attachments have a unique palm grip that keeps your wrists in partial flexion providing a less fatiguing forearm grip and maintaining the focus on your lats.
This grip is best used on a lat pulldown, but can also be used on a seated cable row machine as well. When used on a lat pulldown cable, the main muscle targeted is your latissimus dorsi, which are also known as the wing muscles or lats, and are the largest muscles in the upper body.
These grips are easy to use for beginners as they take away some stress from your grip strength which is usually fatigued first when training back. Taking this stress away ensures you are directly training your back and not leaving any gains behind because of your grip strength.
2. Lat Bar
Lat bars are another option when it comes to lat pulldowns. This attachment leaves you with more space on the bar to find the ideal hand placement for you.
This piece of equipment like the Mag Grip targets your lats and can be used on the cable row machine. It can either be held pronated, to target your upper lats, or supinated, to target your lower lats.
The Lat Bar is easy to use but does not compensate for your grip. With this attachment your grip could give out before your back is completely fatigued. Overall this grip is most likely the most common and used universally for its ease of use and functionality.
3. Mag Close Neutral
Just like the Mag Medium Grip Neutral, this attachment will help to take some of the stress off of your forearms and maintain the tension on your back.
Compared to having a wider grip, the closer grip will put your arms in a stronger position and may involve a little more biceps than Lat Bar or the Mag Medium Grip. Doing this may allow for a little more weight to be added onto your set. This attachment still allows for activation of the lats with a little different bar path. Instead of pulling to your collarbone with your arms flared out, you want to tuck your elbows and pull to roughly your lower chest.
Overall this attachment is easy to use and is a nice alternative to add into the mix for extra bicep/forearm growth.
4. D-Handle
D handles can be used for isolation movements of one side of the back or if you are using a pulldown cable with two attachments, you can attach two d handles for a bilateral movement.
The D handle when used for isolation can be beneficial for a long stretch of the lat along with a tighter squeeze compared to the other grips above. Rotating your wrists during this movement, supinating at the bottom and pronating at the top, gives you that greater stretch and squeeze.
Overall this handle is great because it can give you a bigger stretch and squeeze, virtually in every gym, and for its ease of use.
5. Multi-grip Lat pulldown
Not every gym may have this attachment as it can be a little more difficult to understand how to use it. This attachment essentially has multiple neutral grip bars that allow you to choose how far you want to grip outward or inward.
Instead of having a close grip or a wide grip, this attachment has both built into its design. This attachment can also be used with D handles to give you an even more stretch and squeeze on your lats.
This attachment can be modified with D-handles and allows for different ranges of width for your lat pulldowns. It may be difficult to find a gym with this handle, but if you do I recommend trying it out.
Conclusion
Overall there isn’t one hand that outweighs the other in benefits. It’s about what works best for you and your desired goals. With this in mind, it's always best to try every option to get a feel of how well it works for you.
Most of the time it's about the combination of all these types of handles as they all provide different benefits when exercising. Some attachments will help you isolate certain parts of your back and others can help to build your back bilaterally.
Find what works for you and don't be afraid to try something new. You may like it better than you expect.