How to prepare for a tournament?

wow, that was very helpful.... thank you so much.

Not.

You need to study at a 3D board.  Forget Internet blitz.  You should play between 4 and 12 correspondence games at a time, treating them seriously.  If you are looking at a position for 1 minute and playing a move, you might as well be playing blitz.  I often look at a position and do not make a move because I see nothing concrete.  Sometimes looking again a day later you find new ideas.

Do not play faster time controls than 3 days per move.

While doing that, middle game and endgame books like Silman's Endgame Course and The Inner Game of Chess are the types of books you should be studying at a 3D board.

Clearly post #2 is simply mocking "chest" instead of "chess" (auto-correct doesn't know what it is doing!  ). 

Addressing your question though: I am not so sure that MORE chess is necessary better. A lot of practice is what happens every other day; sometimes abandoning all/close to all, is needed. This applies to many sports, Olympic events, competitions like auto racing and so on (and may apply to chess too). Hypothetically, let us say that you have an upcoming important chess match/tournament on Saturday. You have played a lot of chess this week, but today is Thursday; it may benefit you to play no chess Friday (or little, like a puzzle or something). The logic is then that by Saturday (or whenever the chess event is), you would have practiced a lot AND feel mentally refreshed - since you took a break the day before. This sounds counterintuitive to not practice as much as possible close to an event - but studies show this to be quite effective.

Humans perform best after refreshing breaks (which is why some places stress vacation importance). An old story tells of a man who spent all day chopping down a tree with his ax. A second person spent a fraction of the time chopping down a similar tree. The second person noticed their blade getting dull from the chopping, and decided to pause the work to sharpen the blade. The few minutes to sharpen speeds up the process greatly versus hacking away all day like the first person who was too busy in work to slow down and notice the dull edge.

Our minds are the same way; we need to sharpen them with breaks instead of relentless chopping (or in this case chess practice). Practicing a lot, but with a day break before the event - may do wonders. 

Thank you thriller fan, I noticed that playing OTB chess really improves my play rather than online and have been trying to do that more often. KeSetokiaba thanks for the information on the rest information. I have allays thought that practicing a lot right before a tournament was a good way to prepare but that makes sense. I have noticed that by the time I get to the board I am exhausted and play awful to what I know. I also wonder if practicing in between tourneys helps or not. I have started a new tactic were I get some exercise in between the rounds and I think this might help more but I have not put it into action yet. Do you have any ideas? 

When you prepare for tournaments, play a lot of games and limit yourself to a few opening that tend to lead to middlegame positions where you're familiar with the middlegames that tend to come out of them.

For example, the French, Caro-Kann, and Slav Defenses usually play ...c5 at some point and attack on the Q-side. The Vienna Game and Bishop's Opening often play f4 early, castle Queenside, and attack with a Pawn Storm on the Kingside.

Playing through many games like that mean you do NOT have to memorize variation after variation: you KNOW the kind of position you want to achieve.

Work on tactics and patterns. A lot tactics problems here and at places like chesstempo help, especially if you examine each problem after you do them and try to see the patterns involve and ask yourself why you didn't see them sooner - or why you only looked at forward moves and not backward ones or notice you didn't look at all the diagonal moves, etc.

In regards to post #7 you're welcome

In regards to your idea towards the end: I can't advise too much, because subtleties like this vary for everyone. One advantage of having "tournament experience" is that you have had time to test out what preparations and small aspects help the most. I recommend experimenting a little bit to see what benefits your play - what may work for you may, or may not, work well for others.

Review some of your losses and resolve not to commit the same type of blunders in this upcoming tournament. 

play over lines that you encounter otb alot on stockfish, and get a feel for what to play in those types of positions

Thanks for your timely help but the op might have already won that tournament

Yup that is true