hey king...looking huge at 290- keep up the good work- your pre- contest strategy of moderate weight and higher reps seems to be filling you out quite a bit. just goes to show we're never too old to learn new tricks, no matter how long we've been at it.
don't let the negativity you read get to you. i know its easy to say but i have recently adopted a way of thinking that i hope you'll and others will find helpful.
before, i used to fuel myself with the negativity i used to hear. i would take all that negativity and use it to my advantage. i'd show them...
then one day i stopped using negativity as a fuel. i started to find myself, because i was using negativity, becoming negative. it seemed to me neagtivity was a slippery slope, no matter how you chose to embrace it.
so, i started to ignore the negativity completely. instead of fueling myself with it, i now fuel myself with positivity. instead of thinking i'll show them, and thanking them for giving me the fuel i needed i was in a way still showing them they still affected me no matter how i channeled the negagtivity, you dig?
the reward of using positivity to fuel yourself, and just ignoring the negative altogether makes whatever outcome that much greater a victory, cause you did it yourself, with the right spirit, in the right way, for the right reasons.
good luck in your continued prep. big things ahead, just keep focused.
BFU