Apparently, even if the pilots were trained in Max 8 simulators they still wouldn't have been prepared for the situations that the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines pilots found themselves in.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/business/boeing-737-max-simulators.amp.html
On the Ethiopian flight, the pilots struggled to turn the wheel while the plane was moving at a high speed, when there is immense pressure on the tail. The simulators did not properly match those conditions, and Boeing pilots found that the wheel was far easier to turn than it should have been.
Eh? Did they turn off BOTH hydraulic systems? The 737 max has two hydraulic assists. Turn off the MCAS and auto pilot and you should still have hydraulics (to relieve control pressures). Or were they saying it was so far off base as to not be realistic at all even with hydraulic assist?