I thought the story was that the normal training should have sufficed, and that it did in some cases where the same issue occurred and the pilots were able to handle it (themselves not having any special training either).
There were, however, reasons to be skeptical. Firstly, unlike in most other cases, it was not designed to halt when opposed by the pilot’s use of the control yoke (to do so would defeat the purpose of MCAS.) Secondly, it was found in flight testing that MCAS needed to be made much more aggressive, yet the original decision was allowed to stand. Thirdly, it could stop on its own accord, only to start up again a few seconds later.
Consequently, while MCAS failure is nominally handled as a form of trim runaway, it did not present itself to pilots like the trim runaway scenarios they had trained for.
There may have been a path to saving the aircraft, but it definitely didn't seem at all intuitive. And figuring it out while the plane is actively trying to crash itself is a pretty big ask.