Three quick questions.

[Ninja Monk]

Rip,
Love your books. Probably the most helpful things I've read in the last ten years, though I wish I'd found them at the start of that ten years instead...
Forgive me if any of these questions are foolish (number three particularly is just idle curiousity).

1. When moving onto intermediate programming, is it normal for food/milk intake to be scaled back? I'm guessing this would be the case because weight increases and hence muscle gain are slower.

2. In Practical Programming, you give an example of roughly where a trainee should be on the bench press before beginning dynamic effort sets. This is something I'm very interested in, though I'm certainly not intermediate level yet, so is there a rough guideline for all the lifts? Or can DE sets be done relatively quickly after starting intermediate programming?

3. How exactly does the bicep get worked during the bench or the press? I only ask because I can't figure it out and it's bugging me. It seems to me that the triceps would be used to slow the descent in the eccentric phase, and then naturally to raise the weight afterwards, and what with reciprocal inhibition and all that the biceps ought to be idle during this process.
As I say, just idle curiousity, but if you can put the thought to rest it would be appreciated.

P.S. It bugs me that after reading American forums for so long the word 'curiousity' looks wrong to me.

Thanks.

[Mark Rippetoe]

1. Of course. If you don't you get fat.

2. We have used them fairly soon after beginning intermediate programming, especially if the trainee is not very explosive.

3. It doesn't get much work in the bench, not enough to constitute a training effect that I have noticed. It is in contraction since the humerus is being adducted proximally, but this is balanced by the opposite distal action on the forearm. It probably breaks about even.