I kind of wonder if some of this stuff wasn’t the original intent, or part of it, but then got rooted into the typical reactionary thinking “Ahh, one must be rooted for supreme power!” that goes hand in hand with some of the old Kung Fu philosophy, instead of “hey, this is a good exercise! Let’s do a few minutes and it’ll help work on our flexibility”. Stadion.com rocks.
Intentional pun? 
I’ve also wondered about this. There are loads of identical and nearly identical poses in CMA and yoga. Somewhere along the way drills for fighting and drills for conditioning may have gotten mixed together in such a way that most practitioners no longer know which are which.
I’m sure there’s a certain amount of stuff that gets the horse before the cart, if you know what I mean. It’s just like I’m pretty good on the speed bag at my boxing gym, but that doesn’t mean I can box for shit.
I think that may have a lot to do with the chinese/japanese teaching methods. Instructors frequently don’t EXPLAIN anything, they do something and everyone in the class repeats the action. The students have no idea WHY they are doing these things until much later.
This is not a thread for me trying to cover up the horsestances fighting application, by saying its good for stretching.
New2bjj, not everything is a conspiracy.
Culled from here (Should I explain to you ladies why?):