Is competitive math useful in USACO

General Questions
#1

Hi, I’ve been doing USACO for just over a year now. I’ve noticed that problems from the past ~4-6 years tend to focus more towards problem analysis and creative thinking skills similar to competitive math. While I definitely welcome this, does anyone have any thoughts on how useful competitive math (AMC/AIME track or others) could be in practicing for competitive programming?
Specifically:

  • Could this help at all?
  • Which divisions could this help in?
  • Could it be comparable in efficiency to practicing from cf contests+problemset for those who have no competition math experience

Thank you, any ideas are welcome.

#2

I guess there is a bit of algebraic manipulation in some usaco contests, like in this question:
https://usaco.org/index.php?page=viewproblem2&cpid=1302
IMO for earlier levels AMC10/AIME knowledge is not required; not sure abt gold and plat tho.
Although you can check here:

and the other probably needed math concepts are also provided.
UPD I just noticed you probably do need to know a bit of coordinate geometry ie manhattan distance, eulerian distance, etc.