It's great that you are interested in skills practice, and I wouldn't say that anything you practice in the water is silly. Even if the drill or scenario you come up with is unlikely, you will have to combine in-water skills to execute it.
What generally gives people fits? Maintaining buoyancy control while task loaded or distracted. So any drill you set up that does this is a good one. The basic skills Reg listed in his first set are all simple exercises you learned in OW, but you almost certainly weren't required to do them while hovering in one spot, without changing your location over the bottom or your depth or your orientation in the water. Being able to do those things to that standard means that, if you flood your mask, for example, you won't end up 20 feet higher in the water column before you have it cleared, and you won't lose your buddy in the process. You learned before that you had trouble executing an air-sharing ascent, because you both had some yo-yo problems; again, this is a task-loading buoyancy control issue.
Set up some distractions. In addition to practicing air-sharing and mask skills, try playing tic-tac-toe in wetnotes or on a slate, while hovering. This is a great one, because you have to look down and then up again, write, and pass the slate to your buddy and receive it again.
Try finding an object that you can place one finger on, and work on hovering without moving any body part. When you can do this, try putting your nose on the object and maintaining the same stillness.
From shallow depths, try executing mask-off ascents. The sighted diver controls the maskless diver by signaling "up", "down" and "level off" by turning the maskless diver's thumb up, down, or moving the hand back and forth. This is great task-loading for the sighted diver, and a good lesson for the maskless diver in really learning to FEEL the feedback from exposure suit, gear and ears as you rise in the water column.
What you want to accomplish is a state where control of your buoyancy, trim and position are relegated to unconscious competence, and you have essentially your whole conscious mind to enjoy the dive, or to solve problems if they occur.
What generally gives people fits? Maintaining buoyancy control while task loaded or distracted. So any drill you set up that does this is a good one. The basic skills Reg listed in his first set are all simple exercises you learned in OW, but you almost certainly weren't required to do them while hovering in one spot, without changing your location over the bottom or your depth or your orientation in the water. Being able to do those things to that standard means that, if you flood your mask, for example, you won't end up 20 feet higher in the water column before you have it cleared, and you won't lose your buddy in the process. You learned before that you had trouble executing an air-sharing ascent, because you both had some yo-yo problems; again, this is a task-loading buoyancy control issue.
Set up some distractions. In addition to practicing air-sharing and mask skills, try playing tic-tac-toe in wetnotes or on a slate, while hovering. This is a great one, because you have to look down and then up again, write, and pass the slate to your buddy and receive it again.
Try finding an object that you can place one finger on, and work on hovering without moving any body part. When you can do this, try putting your nose on the object and maintaining the same stillness.
From shallow depths, try executing mask-off ascents. The sighted diver controls the maskless diver by signaling "up", "down" and "level off" by turning the maskless diver's thumb up, down, or moving the hand back and forth. This is great task-loading for the sighted diver, and a good lesson for the maskless diver in really learning to FEEL the feedback from exposure suit, gear and ears as you rise in the water column.
What you want to accomplish is a state where control of your buoyancy, trim and position are relegated to unconscious competence, and you have essentially your whole conscious mind to enjoy the dive, or to solve problems if they occur.