Gesture VS Mass Drawings

On my first day of art class I was asked to start with what was called a gesture drawing of a still life. I did not know what a gesture drawing was, but I found it difficult to learn. Basically I can describe it as moving your hand very quickly and getting the basic shape, position and proportion of the objects down on your paper of your still life or whatever you are drawing.
After several tries, and classes I could understand why the gesture drawing was important and necessary to learn as I could see it helping with position and proportion, but even today after several weeks of trying to master it, I still find it difficult to do.
For an extra credit project several weeks later, I went on a studio tour and learned another technique used besides the gesture drawings which was called the mass drawings. I saw the mass drawings used for paintings where the artists would do a value study of their particular subject to paint, and use the mass drawings to show the different values of light and dark that they wanted to paint. Seeing this demonstrated made sense to me and it also looked a lot easier to form basic shapes then lines very quickly.
When I walked into class after turning in my extra credit project, then I found out that we began to learn how to do the mass drawings. I found them fun to do, and found them very valuable when learning to do values in my drawing class.
I am not sure what techniques other than practice I can use to master the gesture drawings. I think I will just have to apply the 10,000 hour rule to them (when you have completed 10,000 hours doing something, then you will know how to do it really well!).