Are your lat pulldowns feeling kind of dull lately? Tired of just adding more weight to your machine and looking for a new spin on this tried and true exercise?
You might have wondered whether you can attach resistance bands to a lat pulldown machine to spice up your back workouts and challenge your muscles in a different way.
The answer is a resounding “Yes!”. Let’s dive in. Resistance bands are elastic bands that stretch as you pull them. They have several benefits when used on a lat pulldown machine.
Increasing the tension
On a lat pulldown machine, the tension is highest at the bottom of each rep when your elbows are close to your sides, and your lats are fully contracted. As you raise the lat pulldown bar back up, the tension decreases.
By adding resistance bands, you can make reaching the bottom of each rep significantly harder. This way, you can overload your muscles at a different point and stimulate more growth.
Overload your lats
Another reason to use resistance bands on a lat pulldown is to increase the difficulty of the exercise. This is especially useful if you've maxed out the weight stack or weight horns with your weight plates and need more challenge.
Adding resistance bands can create more muscle tension without adding weight. This can also help you break through plateaus and avoid adaptation.
Adding variety.
Finally, resistance bands on a lat pulldown can add fun and variety to your routine. Instead of simply adjusting the static load on the machine, you can experiment with different band tensions and lengths to create different effects.
For example, you can use a lighter band and do more reps or a heavier band with fewer reps. You can also combine bands with different colors or thicknesses to create more or less tension.Now that you know why you should use resistance bands on a lat pulldown let me show you how to attach them to the machine. There are three main ways to do this, depending on what kind of machine you have.
Weight Stack Lat Pulldown
If you have a weight stack lat pulldown that has band pegs on the top plate of the weight stack and the bottom beam of the machine, loop the bands around each of those points.
Make sure to utilize all available band pegs to disperse the tension of the band. This is the easiest and most secure way to attach bands to a weight stack version.
Plate Loaded Lat Pulldown
If you have a plate-loaded lat pulldown, loop one end of the band around the first lower band peg, pull it over the weight horn, loop the other end over the last band peg, and then add weight plates to the horns to trap the bands in place.
This is a bit trickier than the first method, but it works well if your machine doesn't have band pegs on the top plate.
Lat Pulldown With No Band Pegs
If your machine doesn't have band pegs (like most lat pulldown attachments), you can loop a resistance band through the cable attachment you're using and around the top of the machine so that the resistance increases as you pull it toward you.
This is the simplest way to attach bands to a lat pulldown, but it may not be stable or consistent.That's it! You've learned how to attach resistance bands to a lat pulldown machine and why you should do it. Thanks for reading — now go grow those lats!
