Practice at Range

A whole lot of dryfire. Most of the skills you need for practical shooting you can learn and refine through dryfire.

If my local ranges had such lame rules in effect, I wouldn't bother going except maybe to sight my guns in. You're not going to learn anything by mechanically standing in one spot, firing the mandated no-more-than-one-shot-in-three-seconds. Sheesh...

- Chris

So then, dryfire is the solution. Not as much fun as sending lead downrange, but in some ways even better for improvement.

Do you have a shot timer? If not, order one today. Right now. I like the CED7000, but any will do for practice. Get some IDPA targets as well, and set up a bullet-resistant area to practice in.

Read this: http://www.corneredcat.com/Practice/dryfire.aspx

Once you've got your practice area set up, do some practice drills. Draws from 5-10 yards, surrender position, turning, strong-hand only, and weak-hand only. Maybe throw in a few draws to kneeling and prone. Movement drills, both firing on the move and moving to/from cover. Reloads - get some dummy cartridges to weight your magazines. Practice target transitions. Keep track of your par times for each drill, and slowly increase your speed. Never, never, never press the trigger until you see the sights on the -0 zone of the target.

You might get a copy of Steve Anderson's book(s). http://www.andersonshooting.com/ All about dry-fire training.

- Chris

Would it be helpful to load one round and do a simulated 'double-tap' of fire-dryfire?

Or alternate live rounds and snap caps to do simulated 'double-taps' as above in conjunction with malfunction clearing drills?

Good luck!

My brother in law is too young to own a pistol, so for practicing IDPA I gave him an air soft glock from http://www.usg2.com/. The slide cycles with each shot and goes to slide lock when empty, and its mom approved. Still not the real thing, but better than nothing.

sfc
When you live fire at the range, practice tracking the sight and prepping the trigger during recoil. That way, you are following the same procedure as a follow up shot without firing it.
Practice everything else by dryfiring. Augment that with visualization. That will be your strongest tool providing you already have the basics down. It's hard to visualize a perfect draw if you don't know how to make one for example.

+1 to Steve Anderson's book. I have it and really like it.

How do you practice for IDPA when you only have a slow fire range to shoot at? I can't even practice double-taps let alone draws, etc...

Click to expand...

That's the kind of range I have access to too. If you get to know the range workers, you may be allows to double tap. Just demonstrate that you are in control and hit the bullseye.

The way I've practiced is to just shoot targets at 25 yards (max range on the indoor range I go to) and do some faster shooting on 15 yard targets. I've found this to work ok for match prep.

If you need rapid fire practice, then try West End or Lytle Creek.

West End holds regular IDPA, IPSC, and non-sanctioned 'action' pistol matches that offer plenty of opportunities to practice.

Drills for the Public Range

Check out this link to an article by Andy Kemp (of the Midwest Training Group)
from the December 1999 issue of Combat Handguns

http://www.midwesttraininggroup.net/Documents/DrillsForPublicRange.pdf

When shooting at a public range that has restrictions, just work within the rules and practice whatever you can. If they don't let you work from the holster, then begin from low ready. If they don't let you shoot "rapid fire" then shoot at a "timed fire" pace (traditionally 5 rounds in 20 seconds) at reduced scale targets or at targets at a distance. Focus on proper grip, sight picture/sight alignment and follow through.

The suggestion from another poster to use an airsoft gun for developing some of these skills is a point well taken. Get a quality airsoft gun that matches the gun you intend to use -- you can set up IDPA or IPSC type stages in your basement and shoot all you want. I shoot both IDPA & IPSC a little bit and several of my shooting buddies bought quality airsoft guns (Glocks) last fall and shot them all winter in the basement & the garage and were quite happy with the result.

There are a bunch of recent books that you may also find useful:

THE SHOOTER'S APPROACH TO PRACTICE by Sam Conway (available at www.uspsa.org). Conway is an IDPA and IPSC shooter who works as an instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

PERFECT PRACTICE and THINKING PRACTICAL SHOOTING by Saul Kirsch (available at www.DoubleAlpha.biz) Kirsch is a European IPSC shooter who also teaches at a school called the DoubleAlpha Academy.

The focus of both books is specific to markmanship in the competitive shooting environment. There is no discussion of tactics or legal issues relevant to the defensive use of deadly force. Still, to a large degree, dynamic shooting is dynamic shooting, and both books offer a large number of drills that would be useful to anyone wishing to build up their marksmanship skills.

Many new shooters quickly reach a plateau where they stall out in their skill development because they don't know how to practice or what to practice. Both of these books offer a wide variety of exercises intended to help the shooter increase their marksmanship skills. Defensive shooters may have to read with a critical eye and discard those portions of the book that are ONLY relevant to competition. Keeping that limitation in mind, there's a lot of good information here that you can use to keep your personal training program interesting.

(If you order the PERFECT PRACTICE book, it comes to you from Holland and your charge card gets billed in euros. I love e-commerce!)
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IPSC shooter Steve Anderson has two very useful books (which are available from www.andersonshooting.com)

The drills in both books can either be conducted as dry fire drills or as live fire practice sessions.

REFINEMENT & REPETITIONS: DRY FIRE SKILLS FOR DRAMATIC IMPROVEMENT

PRINCIPLES OF PERFECTION: REFINEMENT & REPETITION II (this book actually isn't out yet)

Where in OC are you?

If you are in anything that might be considered "South" OC, then Iron Sights in Oceanside isn't too bad of a trek. I work in Costa Mesa, and the drive from there to Iron Sights takes about 45 minutes, taking the 73 toll road. I actually made it in 39 the other day, but I was on the phone most of the drive, so that might have led to a little bit of speeding.

They have weekly matches, and then a once-a-month IDPA match. They are the most lenient range I've found in the area, and allow rapid fire and are friendly as hell. Not to mention that on the weekends, there are always Marines that bring their ridiculously hot GFs to the range.

Nothing like outshooting a Marine in the lane next to you in front of his woman. LOL.