Getting into Progressive Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Progressive LD: All the Tips and Tricks for Starting 

Progressive (prog) Lincoln-Douglas debate (LD) has gotten progressively more inequitable, with large schools dominating the sphere, and much of the activity becoming a money game. On top of that, entering the world of prog LD can seem scary — from the different arguments read to the fast speaking, it can feel impossible and overwhelming. 

As a sophomore starting circuit LD, I felt that way. My school had one progressive debater, and mainly specialized in traditional (trad) LD (though I am immensely grateful that I had a strong debate program!). I didn’t know where to start, so I turned to a few random YouTube videos I had found.

Now, over a year and a half later, I’ve found so many resources that have helped me enter and love progressive LD. With a bit of organization and wiki-mining, the activity has become so much less scary, and so much more fun. 

The goal of this article is to share some of the core resources available, and to help provide a starting point for anyone confused about where to go. 

Where do I start? 

The first thing that is key to learning progressive LD is familiarizing yourself with the basics of the style. 

That comes down to two things: 

1.  Learning the basic arguments: 

There are a few major sections of progressive LD: LARP, Kritiks, Theory and Topicality, and Philosophy. To start, you want to understand the basics of each, and then begin going a bit more in depth as you learn each one. There are a few resources that can be helpful here: 

1. https://ld.circuitdebater.org/w/index.php/Main_Page and thedebateguru.weebly.com — This will give you a background on each major progressive argument with examples of each type of case 

2. The DebateDrills YouTube Channel — Their channel has an intro to Kritiks, Theory, Topicality, different Counterplans, etc, and will go in depth into different parts of an argument and how to go for them. 

3. https://opencaselist.com/hsld24 — This is the wiki! It is the supreme land of everything LD and Policy and is where people publish their cases. You can look at different schools to see their cases and what different arguments look like. Some schools to check out: 

• Harrison: Soft left affirmatives (AFFs) (think of it like a structural violence affirmative except more relative to national circuit) and settler colonialism Kritiks.

• Harker, Strake Jesuit, Marlborough, Greenhill: Larp (policy AFFs, counterplans, disadvantages, etc.). 

• Lake Highland Prep: Philosophy cases, settler colonialism, soft left affirmatives.

• Ridge: Cap Kritiks, Set Col Kritiks, Non-T affirmatives.

4. Learning to spread and understand spreading (For context, debaters in progressive LD will speak at around 350 WPM, which is known as spreading). Even if you’re not the fastest debater, you can still win a round on efficiency — speed is not everything! However, understanding spreading is key to understanding your opponent’s 1ARs and 2NRs, and thus being able to respond properly. To prepare yourself for this, it is key to watching and rounds on Youtube, which is something that can be extremely helpful for beginner circuit LDers. 

Here are some common spreading drills: 

1. Pick a document off of the wiki (choose a different one every time you do this drill).

2. Read through the document, but say the word “watermelon” in between every word for two minutes.

3. Read through the document backwards for two minutes (you can also do the watermelon drill backwards here).

4. Read through the document but overemphasize every word for two minutes. 

5. Read through the whole document at a faster speed for five minutes. Over time, you will get both faster and clearer. 

To get better at understanding spreading: 

1. Try flowing rounds online without the doc, and then open the doc (which you can find on the wiki) and see what you have missed (if the audio is clear enough, then you could even slow down the audio at 0.75 times speed). 

2. Play debate rounds in the background when you’re doing homework — this will help train your ears and brain to understanding spreading 

Okay, but how in the world will I do all this prep? 

Before I get into HOW to do prep, it’s important to mention that doing prep in progressive LD is much easier if you use Microsoft Word, and download an extension called Verbatim. It is significantly more effective than Google Docs, since your files are going to be really long. This means two things: Google Docs will crash and Word is much easier to organize since you can collapse the headings. 

Now, there are two main methods to getting prep done effectively: 

1. Specialize — Pick an argument or type of argument that you want to focus on the most on (A certain branch of Kritiks, LARP, or Philosophy). 

2. In terms of prep burden, reading Kritiks or Philosophy will definitely be easier, since if you choose to LARP, you will need in-depth prep outs of every disadvantage and counterplan being read, which is a lot. That being said, it still is possible to successfully LARP as someone from a small school, and it has been done.

• Whatever you choose to specialize in will be what you do the most prep from the perspective of — for instance, if you choose two Kritiks you really like, work on answering policy and phil positions from the perspective of that K, and create a large file for that position (e.g. have a ton of links to AFFs). This will help streamline your prep . Furthermore, it will allow you to focus your effort, making it so that you know a couple of arguments really well and can thus make more intuitive arguments in debate. Remember that you don’t need to be an expert at everything! Learning a lot about one argument and then leveraging that against other arguments can be key. 

• Use the wiki and openEV! When you’re trying to get answers to cases or create large K files, do not feel like you have to cut it all — I would go to big schools and download their neg files so that you can get answers to AFFs. Furthermore, OpenEV publishes evidence from major policy camps such as Michigan and Darthmouth and is a great place to find links for Ks, topicality shells, and answers to common impact scenarios. Of course, you don’t want to over-rely on it, but if you’re trying to strengthen your backfiles, it can be the perfect resource. I’ll often just “wiki-mine”, downloading file after file and adding what could be useful to my files. 

What about coaching and practice rounds? 

If feasible, many people will choose to get outside coaching. There are major prep-groups such as DebateDrills, Vanguard and Break Debate, and joining those gives you access to a ton of prep and coaches. Furthermore, many

graduates coach students, and you could always ask around or on the LD Facebook to look for private coaching (you can also find judges for tournaments on Facebook if you ever need to!). 

Another paid resource are debate camps such as NSD, VBI, and TDI, all of which are summer sleepaway camps. It is a great place to immerse yourself in debate, learn from some of the best, and make amazing friends. There are also scholarships and financial aid for such camps. I learned most of my progressive LD basics at these kinds of camps, and it is something I’d highly recommend. 

However, there are plenty of options for those not interested in private coaching or a prep group. Organizations such as Women in Debate and PepTalk Debate have free mentorship programs, where you will be paired with someone experienced on the circuit and can work with them on drills, prep, and more. 

Furthermore, making friends on the circuit who are willing to debate can be super helpful. They are people with whom you  work if you’re stuck on prep or do some rounds with, making debate both easier and more fun. If you don’t know anyone yet, don’t worry, you can reach out to people on the Equality in Forensics Discord, or Debate Discord. 

Lastly, something that I’ve found really helpful is just watching rounds on YouTube (just search up LD debate rounds) and then trying to re-give the speeches people give in rounds. This has allowed me to familiarize myself with different arguments and understand the strategic decisions people 

make. Also for someone who doesn’t have a ton of people to have practice rounds against, it has been incredibly helpful for practice. 

What in the world is disclosure? 

At my first ever progressive tournament, someone ran an argument known as “disclosure” on me. They said that I hadn’t published my cases online and that doing so was unfair. Safe to say, I had zero clue what they were talking about. 

As I mentioned earlier, LD utilizes the wiki (https://opencaselist.com/hsld24), where people publish their (progressive) 1AC and 1NC docs, as well as a “report” of the arguments in every speech (e.g what did the 2NR go for?). This has become a norm to help debate be more accessible and to allow you time to prep out your opponents before round.

Furthermore, people put their contact information on their pages. If they are having a progressive round, 30 minutes before the round, the neg will contact AFF for their case, and the AFF would typically send it. This is what is known as disclosure. 

Every team has the ability to make a school page and then a page under that with their name on it. Don’t worry if it seems a little hard at first — you’ll quickly get the hang of it! 

Conclusion 

It seems like a lot, but I promise, progressive LD will quickly become less scary. Remember that you can always reach out to people — if you just email people on the wiki (typically people have their contact info on the bottom of their pages) with a simple question or two, more often than not, they’ll be happy to answer. Worst case scenario is that they just don’t respond, so don’t be afraid — it can be super helpful to get tips and explanations from experienced debaters.