Originally Posted by gregimotis

By that I only meant to only consider styles based on your goal and not as individual concepts. So for instance, if self defense is your goal, you might not bother at all with the guard game in BJJ excepting how to get off your back quickly. On the other hand if you are training for MMA you would see that the western boxing stance commits way to much to the front leg (opening up the danger of shoots and thigh kicks) and not train that way at all.

In both cases, the student is not really learning the styles, rather they are learning the parts of the styles which contribute to thier current goal. If a person is driven by a goal then this is probably a more efficient way to train. To me however, training this way would rob a person of appreciation for the various styles.