Tags: tournaments, tournament preparation,

Roy has a great post at the 3NR on tournament preparation.

While I am a true believer that 90 percent of debate tournament success comes in pre tournament preparation (good research, practice speeches, effective organization and block writing etc) the remaining 10 percent is obviously vital to your win/loss record and shiny speaker awards.

This post is designed to help you be at your best for those 3 or so days you are at the tournament.

1.)    Sleep- Sleep is the most valuable commodity at debate tournaments.  Most people don’t usually get enough of it and it shows.  Your goal should be to get 7ish hours of sleep a night.  Your most important debate rounds are usually at the end of the day so your energy and focus needs to be there 12 or so hours after waking up.  If you feel so inclined to pull an all nighter (not saying I recommend it) I would do it the night before you leave for a tournament so the night you get to the tournament you can get to sleep at a decent time.  In general there are two types of people who don’t get enough sleep at tournaments.

You can read the post here.