When I added my STR based fire and her pet to my autoing team (originally 3 mages and their pets), the exp that my RB pets were getting increased by a couple hundred a round. Having STR based characters in the team training with a pet seems to increase the exp for me (comparing the amount I get with 4 mages using Normal Attack). Although people could argue that's because there was now 8 characters/pets attacking instead of 6, STR based characters do more damage with a poke than mages.
Like Mercury said it wasn't a very drastic increase, but for my RB pets it helped them level a lot quicker. So you could apply "More Damage = More EXP" to normal training as well as bursting. (: