Practice IMC in real IMC

Paul Tomblin wrote:
In a previous article, "gregscheetah" said:
I want to practice maneuvers, descending turns and basic manual
maneuvering in IMC conditions. Is it possible to get ATC to assign you
a 'practice area' in real IMC environment? Say a block of airspace
like they do for aerobatics? Of course I would first do this with a
CFII.

My CFII would request a hold at the local holding fix, and then request a
block altitude. As long as you stayed on the correct side of the hold,
ATC are remarkably tolerant of what you do - stalls, unusual attitude
recovery, climbs and descents at a given speed, climbs and descents at a
given rate, etc. You're already doing constant rate turns in the hold, so
do them partial panel and time them.



I am not sure if I like that idea of turning a holding pattern into a
maneuvering exercise. A hold is a clearly defined maneuver even though
ATC may be tolerant to deviations.

Why not simply tell ATC that you need some airspace to do some
maneuvering and be done with?