In my first tournament I competed in full contact sparring, if anyone remembers the video I posted a few months ago you will know that I didn't go that well. lol. I went in without proper training and didn't really know what I was in for.

I've decided that I want to give it another go... maybe 2009 or 2010. I want to start training for it now, working out good techniques/ conditioning.

Do you guys have any good advice?

Bottom line, go with boxing style workouts (i.e. physcial training, sparring, etc). Biggest problem for most full contact guys is they don't come to the ring in anywhere near good enough condition. "Complete Kickboxing" by Martina Sprague and Keith Livingston is a good all around fighters guide (in addition to the usual stuff, it covers things like fight / competition strategies, ring generalship, dealing with nerves, etc). Coupled with one of the 'get fit to fight' kind of books (e.g. Complete Conditioning for Martial Arts by Sean Cochran), you should have a pretty good platform to begin training. Customize as you see fit.

Hope this helps

Agreed, get into that mindset of training.

Get used to sparring to be productive, not just to have fun. Really work on different componants to your game.

Spar heavy at least once a week. Scale other stuff in the rest of the time at differnt levels. Lots of mit work that's dynamic and moving is helpful as well.

I'd also stop with whatever other types of training that you're doing a couple of months out. When I'd be getting ready for a shoot or mma fight, I'd quit the weapons training and other sd stuff and focus solely on training for the specific parameters of the fight. Plenty of time to do all that other stuff later.

Make sure you're getting the exact rule set that you'll be competing under as well. Last thing you want to do is train under a wrong assumption for 2 months.

Hope those suggestions were helpful.