Hijack away brother, I hold very little experience in long rifles but am trainable. Appreciate this!OP: If this is known to you, please forgive me, I have no intention of patronizing. Also, sorry for the thread hijack.
I spend a LOT of time behind my .22LR bolt, semi-auto rifle, and pistols. I find them invaluable training tools for technique AND as you say, they are less expensive to shoot (unless you end up needing to run Tenex - grin). The obvious difference is recoil or lack thereof. This will permit you to train muscle memory for hold, breathing, natural POA, and TRIGGER PRESS. For me, the rimfire training is primarily to reinforce trigger technique without having to think about recoil management which DOES make you shoot differently. This may be obvious, but IF you use a .22LR to train trigger technique, it will be MUCH less effective if the trigger(s) on your centerfire weapon(s) are very different to what you are practicing with.
Isolate what you are training from as much else as possible. If you need to work on natural POA, then take as many other variables out of the training as you can (recoil, wind, trigger, ammo, etc.). Same for training trigger technique or wind calling, etc. I.E., if you are training trigger technique, doing so on days with variable, quartering winds, with a bipod, on a wooden bench, with 6 different kinds of ammo (all silly, but as examples of variables), you will be managing so many "other" things that you'll get much less from your trigger training. Again, this may be obvious, but for example, if you are working on trigger, use ONE type of ammo, shoot SHORT range, put your rifle on a good bag or rest, use a solid rear bag or rest, train on calm days, etc.
This is not always really practical, but in building physical/mental skills, training technique is important. You will also obviously want to train ALL of the variables in play EVENTUALLY. I've found that doing the more meticulous training up front yields better and quicker progress than trying to get it all "right" at the same time.
Again, please forgive me if this is all already known to you. Hope some of it helps.