A training exercise matters when the real situation has somewhere to meet it.

Practice pays out only where it overlaps with what actually happens. A drill built around conditions nobody meets produces confidence rather than competence, and confidence in the wrong place is worse than none. The value sits in the join: whether the trained action is available at the moment it is needed, in the same order, under the same noise. Realism is less about difficulty than about resemblance.

Take something you have been rehearsing and hold it against the conditions it is meant for. Adjust one detail so the two match more closely, even if that makes the practice less satisfying to finish.