You stated, however, that you were training for hypertrophy and not strength, so I don't think a valid comparison could be made between the time during which you were training for strength and the later time during which you were training for aesthetics. In fact, if such a comparison could be made, it would seem as though it actually did help you to train legs. You trained bench for strength, unless I'm mistaken. Then, you later trained legs and bench for hypertrophy, yet the rate at which you gained strength on the bench remained unchanged. Had you trained solely the bench for hypertrophy, I think it's reasonable to say that you wouldn't have progressed as rapidly as you did when using the bench for strength purposes. Therefore, training both the bench and legs for hypertrophy allowed you to progress at a rate generally equal to the rate at which you progressed while training for strength, which can reasonably be said to be greater than the rate at which you'd progress for hypertrophy. To me, this means it actually did help you.