It absolutely helped me. I said my first bike ( as in one I paid for myself) was an RD 350 street bike. But I started riding at age 12 on a string of Japanese dirt bikes. So when I got my license and started riding on the street I was already very confident on my ability to ride motorcycles. A lot of reflexes were hard wired by then. I just had to learn not to be a squid on the street!
