places to practice USPSA

[arizonachef]

Does anyone here know of a place I could go and set up 2 or 3 target stands and practice. I am looking to some drills and so on. They could be a range that would allow this or a public land place. I need to practice some drawing, and reloading.

[cysoto]

I am under the impression that most private ranges in Colorado allow this sort of practice. I would also recommend doing some daily dryfire or airsoft practice at home.

[Irving]

You can practice drawing from a holster (even a concealment holster) at Green Mountain Family Shooting Center on S Wadsworth and Jewel. It is $15 for a lane at the range. Technically it is $15 for an hour, but that is only if there is a wait, and I've never been there when there was a wait for a lane.

Anyway, their range only goes to 15 yards and you can't dump your mag. You can do up to a triple tap. That should be enough for just draw and fire practice though.

[SA Friday]

I practice my draw and my reloads in my basement. Best place for it really. Get rid of all the other stuff and really focus the results by getting rid of temptation of punching holes in the paper.

I use my range time for long distance standards and movement. I mix strong hand/weak hand between dry fire and live fire.

[arizonachef]

I do some dry fire and drawing but I dont live alone and my girlfriends daughter is scared of guns a little right now. I really need a place to do it out side even with no ammo. But i need to doo some drawing and shooting as well. So does anyplace come to mind where to go.

[k2peaker]

Longer Term (Ideal) Solution: Clear Creek County Sportsmans Club (Dumont, CO) or Aurora Gun Club are the closest outdoor ranges that are ideal for IPSC/IDPA type practice. I'm not aware of the membership waiting lists for either as of right now (although this time of year is when the memberships typically open up at the private ranges due to annual renewal timing). My advice would be to join one or the other of these clubs -- they are both home to very active USPSA clubs. I have a hard time imaging getting much out of any indoor range practice session unless you had the complete use of the entire range and were not confined to a "lane". Sure, draws and acquisitions, reloads, but as Cy mentioned, you can practice those skills via dry firing.
Declarative Statement: I know of no serious competitive shooters that don't have access to this type of training facility as it's as fundamental (or more) as the gun, holster, mags, ammo, etc.

The Reality of 'How to become a good competitive shooter?' Dry Firing: basement, spare bedroom, bedroom with the door closed, do it when the kid is not around, or other reasonable alternative if you can't get past the gun acclimation issue.
Bold but true statement: There are no serious USPSA shooters that don't dry fire; more imperative during the formative years of competing, i.e., starting out and working your way up the ladder. Granted there are exceptions to this rule, e.g., pro shooters who go to a range mutiple days per week but many of those guys dry fired alot at one time in their career.

Use painters tape and tape targets on the wall (make them IPSC targets, plenty of templates on the web to print). If you haven't discovered Brian Enos's site, you can find stuff there. I print out IPSC targets of varying sizes (to approximate different distances), no shoots, steel targets (poppers and plates). If you don't reload yet, buy some dummy rounds or get a reloader (just ask one of the experienced shooters at a match, be willing to cover the cost of the cases + bullets) to load you 20+ dummy rounds so your mags have match weight (or the blue weighed training mags). Just make sure you have a way to separate and differentiate these dummy rounds from live rounds. I visually check any supposed 'dummies' as I load up for every practice session as these rounds do get chambered.
Get a shot clock to practice with, e.g., PACT, CED. Ones with 'par time' are best for dry fire as you can set par times as your draw and reloads improve.
As point of emphasis, when I go to major matches I dry fire in my hotel room. Again, pretty common practice. If the timer is too loud (like in a hotel room), painters tape over the speaker works well.
Another tip: since you should be using partially/fully weighted mags, I typically reload over pillows or a bed/couch to absorb the wear and tear to the dropping mags over time. Even on carpet, a fully loaded mag hits the floor pretty hard.

Practice Regime: again, look around the web as there are good resources out there. Steve Anderson (out of Ohio) has a couple of books out on the value of dry fire and drills. Matt Burkett has published a sample training regimen. You are trying to develop a number of skills including reaction time (to the beep -- react to the leading edge of the beep) and muscle memory so you need to drill on draws (hands at sides, surrender, strong hand, weak hand, off a table), reloads, target transitions, and other skills. Repetition is the key to developing muscle memory. I do 30-40 draws of each kind per practice session.

Practice "Right": only "good draws" count meaning the following: did you react to the leading edge of the beep? Did your strong hand go straight to the grip? Did you get a clean grip? Did you get a clean pop out of the holster? Did your weak hand go to the correct diaphram position? Did your hands come to the gun close to your chest as you're pushing the gun to the target? Did you begin acquiring sight picture during the push? Are you beginning your trigger prep only as you're getting a good sight picture? Did you break the shot cleanly? Did you call your hit? On reloads, did you keep the gun high? Did you look the reload into the mag well? Again: much more in depth training books/DVDs out there.

Using the par time feature, you can get a sense of where you are. For example, a simple hands at sides draw, set par time for 2.0 seconds. With gun cocked, do the draw, break the shot. Did you beat the 2.0 seconds? Work your way down. Record your progress. Another drill: two targets, set par to 5 seconds. Draw, two shots on target 1, reload, two shots on target 2. Variation: do this second drill while moving left or right one/two steps (simulating box to box transitions).

Culmination Drill: one of the USPSA classifiers (I forget the name) is a good dry fire practice drill. Six IPSC targets equally spaced. On beep, surrender draw and one shot on each, reload, strong hand one shot on each, reload, one shot on each weakhand. You can actually 'dry fire style break the shot' on the first but it's important to continue to do the trigger press reset even though the (dummy round chambered) gun is not cocked. Call your hits, i.e., where/how the sights were aligned when you did your press -- a very important skill as you progress. Start with your par time in the 20+ second range, work your way down. GMs do this (live fire) in the 10-11 second range with good hits.

Short Term Solution, i.e., until you can become a member at one of the private ranges. Dry fire and augment with some of the public land shooting (see numerous sites listed within this "places to practice" subtopic, e.g., Buffalo Creek & others). Enough space for sure for pistol. Weekdays would be far less crowded for the type of practice you'll need to do.
And, you need more than one or two targets. The fundamentals of IPSC require working on movement & set ups, target to target transitions, shooting around/through things (barricades, ports, walls, etc.). If you dry fire a few hours per week, plus get a live fire practice in 1x/week, and compete most weekends, you'll progress quickly.
Good training...

[SA Friday]

Ken, that classifier got the axe and isn't shot anymore, but it's a great drill.

[k2peaker]

Hey SA,
That's probably a good one to pull as it was moldy for sure. I always felt that to get a M/GM score on it, you had to be right on the hairy edge. I saw Henning shoot it once at the New Mexico State match where he was in the 10 range, down 1-2 pts, in Limited. Definitely was Limited/Open neutral.
Still, good drill as you suggest as it wraps alot into one package: the surrender draw, lot's of target transitions (this is one that if you think of every target individidually instead of the 'complete array', you're too slow), and then the reload to strong hand (no problem), and reload to weak problem (disaster factor = high). Any tension? Too slow... Flow like water (B. Lee).
It's one I still do in dry fire but can't say I set it up on the range very often. See ya once it warms up. I admit I'm a fair weather gamer.
DVC.