Studying and practise martial arts is about the same.
Normally, it's very common for a master to teach you how to perform a complete set of "Quan Fa"
Example: "Gong Ri Fu Hu Quan" can have many stroke and each stroke have their own name. or even " Wu Xing Quan"
To perform a whole set can be make perfect by practising more frequently. But how to use each stroke will depended whether your master have taught you or you had tried applying yourself.
Practising blindly is like "Read dead book, read book dead"..Like Gong Zi say "You can read 300 peoms, memorised by hard, don't understand the meaning will not achieve the result"
Hence, knowing and understanding is very different things. I know, does not mean I understand the application.
Am I right to say so...must study harder...