There's a lot to be said for other, non-flight training experience when applied to flight training.
I suppose this falls into the debate about 'real world' of operations compared to the somewhat artificial world of training.
My view point is that there are many, many lessons learnt from flying outside the training environment that enhance the training process. The corollary is that there are also some things that are detrimental.
A pity you can't instruct your mate, TD.