Best Rack Attachments for Lat Width and Thickness

  Short answer: a rack-mounted lat pulldown and low row combo covers most of what your lats need, and handle choice matters less than most guides claim. The popular rule of “pulldowns for width, rows for thickness” is a coaching shorthand, not a tested finding. Both movements train the lats. What shifts the emphasis most is where your elbows travel relative to your torso. This guide covers what the research actually shows about grips and pulling angles, what to check before buying a pulldown/row attachment, and which extra attachments are worth adding.

Width, Thickness, and What the Lats Actually Do

The latissimus dorsi runs from the lower spine (via the thoracolumbar fascia), lower ribs and iliac crest up to the front of the upper arm. It pulls the arm down and back toward the body: shoulder adduction and extension. Pulldowns and rows both do this, just from different starting angles. “Width” in a physique mostly comes from the lats and teres major. “Thickness” seen from the side comes from the lats plus the upper back muscles (traps, rhomboids, rear delts) and the spinal erectors. Rows train those upper back muscles more than pulldowns do, which is the real reason rows are associated with thickness. There’s no good evidence that pulldowns and rows grow the lats themselves in different ways.

What EMG Studies Show About Grips and Angles

EMG measures how active a muscle is during a lift, not how much it grows, so treat these as pointers rather than proof. With that caveat, they give a consistent picture:

• Grip width on pulldowns matters less than people think. Comparing narrow, medium and wide pronated grips (1, 1.5 and 2 times shoulder width), Andersen and colleagues found similar lat activation across the whole movement. Lifters were slightly stronger with narrow and medium grips (about 80 kg for 6 reps) than wide (about 77 kg) (Andersen et al., 2014, doi:10.1097/JSC.0000000000000232).
• Palms-forward beat palms-toward-you. Lusk and colleagues found a pronated (overhand) grip produced more lat activity than a supinated (underhand) grip, regardless of width (Lusk et al., 2010, doi:10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181ddb0ab).
• Pull to the front, and keep row elbows in. A 2026 review of 23 EMG studies found pulling the bar to the front of the body was the pulldown setup most consistently linked to higher lat activity, while grip width effects were inconsistent. For seated rows, a narrower grip and elbows kept closer to the sides were each linked to more lat activity (Di Fonza et al., 2026, doi:10.3390/jfmk11030315).

The practical takeaway: pick grips you can pull hard and pain-free through a full range, pull the bar to your upper chest, and keep your elbows tucked on rows when you want the lats rather than the upper back to do the work.

The Core Attachment: Lat Pulldown and Low Row Combo

A combo unit that mounts to your rack gives you both a pulldown and a seated row in the rack’s own footprint. For most home gyms it replaces two standalone machines and is the one lat attachment worth buying first.

What to Check Before Buying

• Pulley ratio. A 1:1 system gives you the plate weight at the handle; a 2:1 system halves the resistance but doubles how far the handle travels for a given carriage movement. Neither is better for progress as long as you track the same setup over time. The 1:1 vs 2:1 pulley guide covers the tradeoff.
• Enough handle travel. The handle should reach a full overhead stretch at the top of a pulldown and still come down to your upper chest, and on rows it should let your arms reach fully forward. Compare the unit’s listed travel against your own reach and your rack height.
• Load rating. Check the maker’s rated capacity for the attachment itself, and match it to the loads you actually use.

Will It Fit Your Rack?

Rack attachments have to match three things on your uprights:

• Tube size. 2×3 and 3×3 attachments aren’t interchangeable. Some imported racks sold as “3×3” are actually 75 mm tube, about 1.2 mm smaller per face than a true 3×3 (76.2 mm), which is enough to make a bracket fit loosely.
• Hole size. Racks split between 5/8-inch hardware (Rogue Monster Lite, REP PR-4000, Bells of Steel Hydra) and 1-inch hardware (Rogue Monster, REP PR-5000, Bells of Steel Manticore, Sorinex XL). A 5/8-inch pin sits loose in a 1-inch hole, and a 1-inch pin won’t fit a 5/8-inch hole. The 5/8 vs 1 inch hardware guide explains the two standards.
• Hole spacing, for anything that uses two pins or spans several holes.

The Rack Attachment Fit Checker checks tube size and hole size against attachments from the major brands, and flags any hole-spacing requirement the maker lists so you know what to measure. Buying within your rack maker’s own line is the simplest way to avoid surprises.

Handles and Bars

  Once the combo is installed, a few handles cover nearly everything:

• A straight or slightly bent pulldown bar for overhand pulldowns. Grip anywhere from about shoulder width to twice shoulder width; the research above shows little difference in lat activity across that range.
• A close neutral-grip (V) handle for seated rows with elbows tucked, the row setup most associated with lat activity.
• A multi-grip or MAG-style bar if you want to try different grip widths and angles. Neutral grips haven’t been shown to beat overhand grips for the lats, but some lifters find them easier on the shoulders and elbows, and that matters for training consistently.
• Single D-handles for one-arm rows and pulldowns. Working one side at a time lets the arm travel a little further back and makes left-right differences easier to spot.

Landmine Attachment

  A landmine holds one end of a barbell in a pivot at the base of the rack. It adds rowing variations with a different resistance arc from a cable:

• Landmine or T-bar rows, using a V-handle or T-bar row handle under the bar
• Meadows rows, a one-arm row gripping the end of the bar

Check the landmine’s rated load and how it attaches. Designs that engage the upright at more than one point resist twisting better than a single pin.

Band Pegs

Band pegs let you anchor resistance bands to the rack. On rows, a band anchored in front of you gets tighter as you pull, adding resistance near the end of the rep. On pulldowns, a band anchored at the floor would actually assist the pull, so accommodating resistance there needs an anchor above you. Evidence that band-added resistance improves muscle growth compared with plain cable or plate loading is limited, so treat band pegs as optional.

Lever Arms for Chest-Supported Rows

Lever (jammer) arms mount to the uprights and pivot through a fixed arc, letting you do plate-loaded rows. With a bench set inside the rack, you can do chest-supported rows, which cut out most of the lower back demand and body English of a barbell row. That makes them a good option if your lower back limits your rowing volume. Check the arms’ rated load and the quality of their pivot bushings before buying.

Bottom Line

Start with a pulldown and low row combo that fits your rack’s tube size, hole size and spacing. Add a straight bar, a close neutral handle and a pair of D-handles, and you have what the research supports: overhand pulldowns to the front, rows with elbows tucked, and full range of motion. A landmine and lever arms add useful variety; band pegs are a nice extra, not a necessity. For attachments beyond the back, see the 10 best power rack attachments for building muscle.

Sources checked September 30, 2026. EMG studies measure muscle activation during a lift, not long-term growth; research summaries describe the cited studies, and individual results vary. Rack hardware specs as listed on manufacturer pages, checked September 22, 2026.

Related guides

• Choosing cable attachments for each muscle
• 1:1 vs 2:1 cable pulley ratios explained
• 5/8 vs 1 inch rack hardware: what fits your rack