Thanks for the in depth response
I want to bulk to get stronger. Whenever i workout without gaining weight, i just end up spinning my wheels in place. Evidence of this in my log where I couldn't go down past 193-194lbs for like a month and didn't increase strength one bit in any lift at all.
I think you should look at this another way. Yes, it's easier to get stronger while your bw goes up... but if you get stronger while your bodyweight goes up and then lose strength when you cut weight you are also spinning your wheels, albeit not in place. As a relative strength athlete you don't really have the luxury of gaining weight to get strength. Super-heavy weight powerlifters do and from them we know that an extreme surplus is calories is a must for achieving massive lifts; if fact the weight of the drug free guys make the case that without drugs massive calories are needed to push weights to elite levels.
However, you are not going for power-lifting records. I believe it's possible for you to gain strength without much bw gain if you do your nutrition right. Calories in calories out will determine what happens on the scale, but your more detailed nutritional plan will go along way to what happens to your lifts along the way. If you are cutting and restricting carbs it will be really hard to get your body to gain strength unless your really weak/fat.
What I would suggest for you is not to bulk but to eat enough to get stronger. How lean are you? If you are closer to 10% than 5% bf I wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't increase strength while coming pretty close to maintaining bodyfat. The last time I cut from 210 to 200 I increased my front squat max triple from 315 to 335. Modest increase, and of course when I let myself go to 220 my numbers went up a lot more.... But it's still possible. And as a jumping athlete low bw is even more important than for sprinting.
my advice: If you are at your goal weight why not eat maintenance for awhile and continue to train hard in the gym. You were just in a restrictive diet so eating maintenance levels should put you in comparatively a much better state to make strength increase. Try and up your lifting frequency, ie if you squat 2x a week try and move to 3-4x with a few high intensity lifts each session and some moderate intensity moderate volume sets (I think specificity of programs is overrated but something like a few singles, doubles or triples each session and then a few back off sets of 4-7 reps).
For now keep your protein close to 200g and get about 20g carbs before workouts and 50g of carbs post workout. Of course throwing in about 40 grams of heathly oils takes your calories at this level to about 1500... Meaning you won't have a ton more to play with and not gain weight. Kinda elimates things like late night pizza. That's why this approach takes discipline. Give your lifts time... strength should gradually increase, but if you really find your lifts getting stuck then try to counteract this by adding in some most postworkout carbs. A big reason we lose strength when cutting is insufficient glycogen reload, you can make huge inroads by modulating this.
If you follow this kind of an approach you may in fact end up gaining some weight as you might find it necessary to increase your carbohydrate intake more to keep the strength from stalling. This weight gain should be moderate and can be held back by a few days of tempo work (ie. Medium intensity system work - sprinting/swimming). I think this type of approach in the long term will get you much better relative strength than a blanket decision to start eating at a surplus of X amount of calories. This advice isn't super simple but you are already a pretty strong guy (squatting 400+ at under 200lbs) and as such your nutrition requirements are going to be more advanced than +cals/-cals if you want to become an even better athlete. Think of your new goal as getting stronger and eating just enough to facilitate this rather than deciding to eat a surplus of calories which will make it easier to get stronger. Your weight work dictates the nutrition rather than nutrition dictating what you can do in the gym.
