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Don't practice arguing. Practice thinking. When you believe the right things for the right reasons, good arguments will follow. I explicitly try not to be too good at arguing (with myself or with others), so that I can't persuade people of things without having done the hard work of figuring out what I rationally must believe and how strongly I must believe it.
(Edit: In case it might have come across the wrong way... I didn't mean those first three sentences to sound condescending at all, as though I was saying you in particular need to practice those; just stating my view on what we should want to be good at.)
I would not have argued in a rhetorical way, but would have tried to present the most thoughtful arguments that I could identify. (In other words, it would be a way of thinking about the issue.)
The exercise is to relate to the position and then experience (from a relatively detached viewpoint) how the position is taxed or not taxed by the counterarguments. I think this would be an interesting exercise to see if your arguments would work with someone who (in theory) holds your friend's position but is willing to absorb the counter-arguments.
Thanks for your advice, but it doesn't resonate so much for me. I'm not fearful of persuading people of things, but I need to learn how to persuade myself. In particular, what you wrote seems backwards. Believing the right things for the right reasons follows from developing and recognizing good arguments, and I need more skill in developing arguments.