Bulking problem?

[Thanatos]

Hi comrades,

I've cut down - my waist is down - but I have also become too skinny in the process. I wish to bulk, so I am planning to eat at 500 calorie surplus each day. Is this fine?

Also I have no access to weights and rely on bodyweight exercises like pushups etc. But my fear is: Will these exercises act as a cardio and therefore hinder bulking and make me lose weight instead? They say caloric surplus+exercise = muscle mass, caloric surplus+cardio=either loss or maintenance. But I don;t want that. I want gain. So will pushups etc. hinder bulking (even if I eat at surplus)?

[Brotto Rühle]

If you're willing to do the cardio and lifting to supplement it, there's "weight gainer" out there. Mutant Mass being a good one. You want muscle mass, you need to lift... tear the muscles, they repair and bulk up.

[RA89]

To build muscle you'll need to add more resistance, high rep body weight exercises will build up good conditioning and get you tired, but they won't stimulate the muscle sufficiently.

Typically for a natural lifter you want to be doing exercises in the 5-8 rep range ideally.

You can modify body weight exercises to get more resistance, e.g. weighed push ups with a back pack filled with weights or heavy books, weighted chin ups etc.

If you're not training with a heavy enough resistance and you're at a cal surplus you'll gain just fat bro.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

yeah add 500 calories to your maintenance calorie intake, and then you need to use this extra energy intake to push yourself harder in your resistance training/weights program.

There need to be 2 caveats:

you need to take in 500 'good' calories. The extra food will make you fat if it is low quality crap and you don't exercise. You need to make sure it is mostly protein - lean grilled chicken breast, grilled white fish, eggs, beans etc.

You also need to make sure that you are using these extra 500 calories. The extra calories, even if they are high quality lean protein sources, will still add fat if you don't increase the intensity of your weights program.