You may have point there. However, I experience math (and programming) quite differently than learning a language or painting: Once I grasp a concept, I can use it. Before that, it's mostly useless to me. Execercising it more afterwards does improve my usage, but more in the sense, that I'm quicker to spot situations where I can (or can't!) use that particular feature/theorem. Sometimes I happen to see a new angle which enables new tricks. Learning to play piano on the other hand is a lot about muscle memory, which you train by repeating the same thing again and again. Yes, there is part of this in math too, but thats the handicraft-stuff. Arithmetics. Things a computer can do better.