I noticed that when I lift heavier I find it harder to max out especially without a spotter. When I lift lighter I can go longer after my arms start to give out on me which helps me max out when I'm working out alone. Is this just as effective as lifting heavy?

your talking about benching right? what rep ranges do you stick to?

Doing lighter sets for more reps in the end is going to wind up helping your max out more. A friend of mine use to do this, and I believe it will help you out with your max out. It'll give the muscles more stamina and if your doing a lot of sets it will work them a lot more, which will help raise your 1 rep max out 

from my experience i've gotten alot better results with gaining strength from rep ranges between 5-8. although you can still get gains from 15+ per set, i have just personally gotten better reults with lower rep ranges. if your at home alone then try to find a partner or at least a spotter, pushing yourself to that last rep is going to help alot with increasing your numbers.

ORIGINAL: thsfootball1

Doing lighter sets for more reps in the end is going to wind up helping your max out more. A friend of mine use to do this, and I believe it will help you out with your max out. It'll give the muscles more stamina and if your doing a lot of sets it will work them a lot more, which will help raise your 1 rep max out 

thats not true at all, by using a higher rep range you are stimulating the slow twitch muscle fibers which increase endurance, if you want to increase your one rep max you need to do heavy weight with low reps to stimulate the fast twitch muscle fibers.  Why do you think power lifters do sets of 1-3 with heavy ass weight?

i agree with soccerking 100% its common knowledge that the best way to increase ur max is to perform sets with higher weight and lower reps. i have never heard of anyone who tries to increase their bench by doing 15 reps?

I don't think he is talking about max attempts, I think he means getting more from each work out.

When he lifts heavy he can not push himself as far the stopping point or the maximum he is capable of lifting seems less, because he is so close to failure. Where as higher reps he can go longer, and seems to inflict more damage because he can squeeze out more reps under the strain, with out danger of losing the lift entirely.

Did I interperate that right???

I say mix it up work all the rep ranges every now and again, unless you have a really specific sports or perfomance goal.

I think thats what he meant somewhat, his post is hard to interprete

ORIGINAL: Daniel265

i agree with soccerking 100% its common knowledge that the best way to increase ur max is to perform sets with higher weight and lower reps. i have never heard of anyone who tries to increase their bench by doing 15 reps?

I'm not sure about 15 reps, but recently for like a month and a half I did sets of 10. Then I switched back up to sets of 5 and I could do like 30 pounds more with sets of 5.