Practice is vital. Where to practice can suddenly become very important too! For "non standard" flying, which certainly includes touch and goes, practice on a runway you know well. If this means flying a number of normal circuits there first, then do more aggressive flying if you're comfortable. Get to know the hazards, and visual cues there. And in choosing the place, choose a place where help is nearby if it goes bad! If you get it all wrong, and end up in the tree off the end of the runway, you'll very much appreciate if that tree is along the perimeter of a busy airport, with emergency services, and an access road nearby, rather than a long way from anywhere, un noticed.
On one of my trips to the Canadian arctic, I planned a one day camping trip onward from the group. I informed them in great detail where I would go, and I carried a SPOT, and a sat phone. I chose my camping lake with a beautiful beach and waterfall - it was 93 miles away from anyone. I remember reminding myself that was very much NOT the place to horse around in the plane, everything calm and cautious. No problems. That contrasted with a Youtube cockpit video clip I had seen of a private flying boat landing in a magnificent fjord in Greenland, with some extreme water maneuvering once down. Well unless that pilot was being followed there by a fully equipped SAR team, that was a dumb place to do that! It seemed to work out okay, but what a risk!
So last summer, when it all went wrong, the pilot I was training, and I ended up being ejected through the windshield, and floating by our torn lifejackets, grasping bits of a sinking plane. Happily, the place I'd chosen for this training was a water aerodrome very well known to me, right next to a busy airport, where everyone knew me, and served by the fire department for which I'd been a volunteer for 25 years. The crash was witnessed, and we were rescued within minutes. The people who got me from the water to the hospital all knew me, and my wife was so well informed, that she was waiting at the hospital when I arrived. My casual choice as to where to train most certainly saved my life, and that of my fellow pilot - and the uninsured wreck could be taken out by crane at the dock, rather than having to hire a helicopter.
The freedom of flying imposes a responsibility to make your own decisions in the interest of greatest safety. Yes, we must practice emergencies, and non standard techniques, do it at a place at which a problem does not become instantly worse because of remoteness. So my first three practice forced approaches onto the water yesterday were in the same lake, and, this time, instead of leaving the lake by ambulance, I left in the airplane I'd arrived in!