Long in my wanderings did I travel the land of Cathay, searching for the perfect bicep pump. I learned the squeeks and grunts of the inscrutable and diminutive natives, eventually reaching a high mountain temple, filled with Nautilus machines and Tibetian monks at the end of the Silk Road. After months of curling, crunches and skullcrushers, yet still without overall progress, I was granted audience with the reclusive Master of the retreat.

Legends were told of his hideously deformed body and the amazing feats of functional strength it could perform. My pulse quickened as I passed through the quarters of his attendants, each milking yaks or cows into gallon-sized buckets. In the name of what twisted and foreign gods would these secretions be sacrificed? I kept my curiosity at bay, and recited my 7-day bicep/calve split routine to ease my fluttering pulse.

As I ascended the thousand steps to the inner sanctum, thinking all this cardio would be great for my gains, a clanging and then shuddering of the earth began to filter into my brain. It sounded almost like leg extension plates banging at the end of a rep, but the cadence and tempo was unfamiliar. Almost as if someone were curling a great weight, then dropping it each rep. I pressed on, aware of obscure machines rising from the plateau ahead.

To my disgust and bemusement, the Master was... lifting the bar from the floor, except without rounding his back as we had been taught to, then...jumping with the bar and then...curling the bar to his shoulders whilst airborne. The sight offended me greatly.

When he dropped the bar, my eyes then fell upon his puny biceps first. This man called himself the Master of this temple? This was the man they spoke of with respect and fear? His bloated, milk stained leotard strained to cover his massive gut and his... his... his...

When my eyes fell upon his unholy quads and glutes, I immediately vomited from vertigo and nausea. They were unlike the straight and true pencils all men possessed, but seemed to bulge through time itself. While I was paralysed with the non-Euclidean geometry of his thighs, he turned from his rubber (Rubber? What witchery!) plates and squatted, squatted so deep beside me that I cried out involuntarily for the safety of his knees. From his belt, wordlessly, his handed me a small pouch.

He indicated that I should eat it. Too stunned to resist or suggest another course of action, I opened the feedbag and found it full of oats. Did he take me for a beast of burden? His ass rising fluidly from the ground, he bid me stand. He began to talk in an strange tongue, I could only manage the words "sticky" "alpha" "beta" and the repeated phrase that filled my heart with dread: "ess ess". His chant was echoed from the arcane racks and stands around us, but by some trick of acoustics altered to "lower, faggot".

I was helpless as a child as he led me to the curl rack. Putting the weight not on my shoulders but on my lats, he forced me to adopt a close grip and... and... together we descended to nameless depths, past even the quarter squat familiar to a lunatic fringe. Down towards endlessly reproducing stars, without reason, without passion. My anus prolapsed. I saw through time and space.

I don't know how long I was at the bottom of that squat for. As a once-staunch curlbro, I began to pray to my god of popped collars and douchebag haircuts. There was no answer and I truly despaired. I begged anyone, anything to help me in my darkest hours. I thought of my most beloved thing in the world, and offered it to the ancient and bulking gods laughing at my miserable plight. I whispered "Snausages" and my vision at last went dark.

I felt an invisible string attach itself to my ass and guide me from the bottom back up to the top of the squat. When my vision returned, I had already racked the bar. The Master beckoned me to a cold iron strongbox in the centre of the room, beside a brazier full of dusty white incense that covered the bars, the Master and even myself.

From it, he took a grimore bound in soft leather. Its title read "Squatronomicon", authored by the Mad Texan, Al-Rippleteats. The Master handed me the book, and as I opened it, I was assaulted by horrifying diagrams and obscene blasphemous information. Instead of recoiling like I once would have, instead I grew stronger on the heady brew. The master handed me a gallon bucket of yak milk, and distaining a chair, I squatted down and began to read.

The young cultist in the book was me, diligently going ATG, and carrying out the deadlift, press, clean and bench. As a flipped through the pages, fresh red ink stained the vellum of the grimore. I began to feel the leather, and noticed bellybuttons, as if it had been bound in excess human skin.

As I continued to read, I felt my butt-abs grow in size and definition, and my heart harden. Truly, this was world-changing knowledge. I wondered what price the knowledge was extract from me. As I finished the tome, I reached the acknowledgements, seeing the dark lord Rippletits in his un-aesthetic glory. On the last page was picture of myself, going ATG on a 300kg squat. I was pausing on rug of some sort, a rug that reminded me of my dog Snausages.

Then it hit me like a dropped 500kg decline bench.

Months later, my father’s estate sent a rescue party to find his son and heir after he died in an unfortunate Smith Machine malfunction involving 1000kg calve raises. Supposedly even dental records were unsuitable to identify him. Only the distinctive tribal sleeve tattoo remained to say it was my father.

They found me there, in the temple. Having suffered through days of strange trembling mountainsides, distressing smells of egg, rotting milk and fermented oats, along with avalanches triggered by sudden convulsions of the earth, my rescue party reached the inner sanctum of the temple. Pushing aside gnawed bones both human and animal, they found the master ritually killed in a circle of chalk. Even in death, the Master remained in a perfect squat. Beside the corpse was a shaft that stretched deep below the earth.
As chance would have it, the mountain lurched again, and one token minority fell into the gaping hole. Horrifying cracks and gulps were heard from the very base of the mountain. Sending one plucky curlbro down the shaft, they discovered me there at the bottom. A bar on my shoulders, a bar constructed by an ancient race, for a forbidden exercise. My shoulders were supporting the entire weight of the LMAO!1! 2 PEAK above.
I was going ATG.