Beyond Briefing: Preparing For a Tournament
If you’ve ever asked a debater whether they felt prepared for an upcoming tournament (especially nationals) you know that they never fail to answer “No.” But how is that possible? They’ve dedicated copious amounts of time, thought, and energy to researching, briefing, and strategizing, how could they possibly still be unprepared? In this post, I’ll be going over the pieces of tournament preparation that many debaters miss.
Eat well
I know, I know. You’re high schoolers, you’re invincible, you can eat anything and be at 100% capacity the rest of the day. Turns out that’s not true. A journal of school health study found a strong relationship between diet quality and academic performance in youth.
“Across various indicators of diet quality, an association with academic performance was observed. Students with decreased overall diet quality were significantly more likely to perform poorly on the assessment.
[...]
Conclusions: These findings demonstrate an association between diet quality and academic performance and identify specific dietary factors that contribute to this association.”
What does this mean for you? There’s no “one size fits all” debater diet, but cutting out empty calories like processed carbohydrates and sugary foods/drinks is a good place to start. You want to be eating clean, minimally processed, foods that don’t bog you down in any way and leave you feeling satisfied and strong. Fruits, veggies, whole grains, lean meats, and healthy fats are all solid choices. But it doesn’t stop with your food, water is critical to being your best self at a tournament. Since debate involves talking all day at sometimes excessive speeds and volumes, one becomes dehydrated very quickly. Make sure you’re drinking plenty of water the day before and during your tournament. The underlying cause of many of those pesky “tournament headaches/dizziness” is simply not enough to drink. You may think this drastic change in diet is a bit overkill for such a non-physical activity, but a tournament (especially a multi-day one) takes a bigger toll on your body than you may realize. Try eating well leading up to and at your next tournament and see what a huge difference it makes.
Sleep Well
We all know this one is true but we never do it. If there’s one word that describes a debater at the end of a tournament day it’s tired, the remedy, more sleep. TPers especially have a bad habit of staying up the nights before and of tournaments to write that emergency brief, losing valuable hours of sleep in the process. I won’t bore you with studies about the effects of poor sleeping habits on academic performance because I think we already know what they’ll say. That said, if 8 hours is the general rule, a healthy 9 wouldn’t hurt during an intense tournament. With stoa tournaments sometimes starting before the sun is up, the only way to reach that number is to go to bed earlier. If you’re finding that difficult, it may be time to plan your schedule leading up to tournaments to accommodate your sleeping needs. I know I may sound crazy again, but give it a try and see what more sleep can do for you at tournaments.
Organize Well
Another chronic disease among adolescents is our messiness, most debate boxes could easily be mistaken for wastebins, our suits sometimes get thrown in backpacks haphazardly, and our schedules and time management are nothing short of chaotic. You may not realize it, but all this disorder has a direct impact on your stress and performance levels at tournaments. So what does it look like to be “organized” heading into a tournament? Well, it starts with your time. You can’t expect to sleep well if your schedule is in shambles. Ensuring a stress-free tournament often requires a disciplined schedule in the preceding week. This means knocking out assignments and chores earlier rather than procrastinating so that your briefs aren’t being written at 1 am and you can hit the hay 10+ hours before your first event. When your schedule is in order, your life and therefore tournament becomes less stressful and both more enjoyable and successful. Organization also encompasses the more obvious facet of your materials. Keeping your debate binders, boxes, laptops, chargers, writing tools, etc in order can do wonders for your tournament experience. Instead of having to rustle through your debate box in panic as you search for a brief, you can retrieve it calmly from its usual location, the little things like this count at tournaments and being organized is your surefire way to ensure they happen.
When you saw the title of this post you probably were expecting something less mundane and generic or some special hacks that top-tier competitors have discovered. But the truth is, some basic self-care routines can drastically increase your mind’s potential and sometimes it’s the boring things that make the biggest difference.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1746-1561.2008.00288.x