I’m a 5’8 female who’s 135. I got into weight lifting about a year ago (not tracking calories) and have managed to gain about 10 pounds within that time with still have a bf % of around 18-19%. I still am a little skinny and have what you can say as still a tad of a skinny fat body with noticeable lower belly fat. I’m running 40-50mpw per week and not training for anything as of now. 1) Am I already to heavy to even consider bulking especially with my lower stomach fat? 2) Will gaining 10 pounds and getting up to 145 increase my injury risk? Btw I don’t track calories and have been maintaining my weight around 135-136 for months on end now. Would say with running and lifting i’m taking in maybe around 3k to maintain.
I’m a 5’8 female who’s 135. I got into weight lifting about a year ago (not tracking calories) and have managed to gain about 10 pounds within that time with still have a bf % of around 18-19%. I still am a little skinny and have what you can say as still a tad of a skinny fat body with noticeable lower belly fat. I’m running 40-50mpw per week and not training for anything as of now. 1) Am I already to heavy to even consider bulking especially with my lower stomach fat? 2) Will gaining 10 pounds and getting up to 145 increase my injury risk? Btw I don’t track calories and have been maintaining my weight around 135-136 for months on end now. Would say with running and lifting i’m taking in maybe around 3k to maintain.
1) You are very far from being too heavy for bulking. One might be there if they either already have way too much muscle making it hard to gain more muscle or way too much fat, like morbidly obese.
2) Gaining 10 pounds of muscle won’t increase injury risk and will probably decrease it. At your weight, even gaining 10 pounds of fat will probably slow you down more than increase injury risk.
If you prefer, you can recompose some of your fat to muscle and gain muscle mass that way without much if any overall weight gain. You can do that by continuing to eat at maintenance or slightly (like 10%) below. You can also lose say 3 pounds of fat and gain 13 pounds of muscle, for which you’d need to eat in surplus (but not as much surplus as 0 fat change and 10 pounds of muscle).
Going to have to make a decision, you wanna be a runner or a lifter? Both just won't work, ever seen a buffed runner?
Calorie intake/output is what weight gaining is all about, that and weight training if looking fo muscular pounds. Running will burn too many calories, calories ya need to pack on the pounds.