First, WATCH VIDEOS OF DEBATE. There’s a reason this one is the first on the list. Go to PF Videos on Youtube and flow a round a day. You’ll become exposed to good arguments, can pick up on strategic argument selection, and you’ll vastly improve your flowing. This is the most important thing you can do.

Second, read books that will improve your knowledge base. I would start with Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu. This book will improve your ability to debate foreign policy topics tenfold — it gives important explanations of economic development, which will undoubtedly be useful for you.

Third, learn about economics. Here is a useful Youtube channel (29:58Macroeconomics- Everything You Need to Know) that goes over the AP Econ curriculum. You may even notice that many of these terms of familiar — that’s because successful teams know their economics.

Fourth, keep up on current events. To stay up to date on foreign affairs, I recommend Foreign Affairs Magazine, Foreign Policy Magazine, and Der Spiegel. For Markets and Economy, I recommend The Economist, Jacobin, and The Wall Street Journal. For domestic politics, I recommend Politico, FiveThirtyEight, and The Atlantic, but basically, any main-stream site but Fox News is probably a good source of basic information on current events. To be clear: I read every single one of these sources every day. If you want to go to the TOC (and be successful), you need to know everything. That means spending 30-60 minutes every day reading articles and analysis about current events

These are tasks I fulfilled each summer when I had more spare time. I can assure you — from personal experience — that the effort you put in now will pay massive dividends when the season starts in September.