Even though understanding is the point of learning, but people do not pay enough attention to the fact that learning is always a collection of small impressions on the mind. You never learn anything until the small impressions accumulate. Thus, we find in tractate Avoda Zara page 19a that one should always be ‘’ saying the words and going, even though he does not remember,and even though he does not understand what he is saying. This approach found helped me in physics and math and certainly all the more so in learning gemara with tosphot