What the convention fixes
A pulley ratio describes how many rope lengths carry the load between the stack and the handle. In a 1:1 arrangement, the handle sees the stack. In a 2:1 arrangement, two lengths share it and the handle sees about half, while moving twice as far. In a 4:1 arrangement, a quarter, moving four times as far.
The convention that needs naming is a marketing one: the figure printed on the box is almost always the stack mass, because it is the larger number. It is a true figure about the machine. It is simply not the figure that describes the exercise.
What it does not promise
It does not promise the load at the handle, and nothing on a listing converts between the two unless the maker did it for you.
It does not account for friction, which on cheaper pulley sets is not negligible and which works in the opposite direction from the ratio — making a light setting feel heavier at the start of the movement.
It does not account for the bar or handle’s own mass, which on a lat bar is a real fraction of a light setting.
And it says nothing about the cable, the bearings or the guide rods, which are what actually wear out.
What it works with
It works with the stack mass and the plate increment, because what a station is usable for is decided by its smallest usable step as much as by its largest load.
It works with the cable travel, which is the other half of what a ratio buys: the reason a 2:1 arrangement exists at all.
And it works with the machine’s published attachment pin diameter, since the accessories that make a station useful are only compatible if the pin matches.
How we read it on this site
Where a maker publishes a ratio, the page prints it beside the stack mass, and says what that combination puts at the handle only when the maker states that figure too. Where no ratio is published, the page reports the stack mass as a stack mass and records that the ratio is not stated.
No page here calculates a handle load from a stack figure and a ratio inferred from a picture. That arithmetic is simple, which is exactly why it is tempting, and a number produced that way would be ours rather than the maker’s.
Questions readers send in about this
How do I know a machine’s ratio if the listing does not say?
Often you cannot from the listing alone, and a page here says so rather than inferring one. Where a maker publishes the ratio, or publishes both a stack mass and a handle load, the page reports what was published. A photograph showing pulleys is not a ratio.
Is a 2:1 machine worse than a 1:1 one?
It is different, not worse. A 2:1 arrangement halves the load and doubles the cable travel, which is why lat towers and functional trainers use it: the range of movement at the handle is what those exercises need. What matters is that the stack figure is read for what it is.
Does the same apply to leg presses?
Sled-and-rail leg presses have their own version of the problem: the sled’s own mass and the angle of the rail both change what the plates actually resist. A published plate capacity is a capacity, not a load at the footplate, and pages here keep the two apart.
Last reviewed 20 September 2026