Hi Carneo, welcome to the site!
I'm super glad to hear you like us and are practicing hard. :)
The articles you refer to are indeed excellent guidelines to get started with. If I'm explaining something you already know and I misunderstood your question, let me know alright?
The idea behind the gestures is to give you a solid foundation to work off of (as well as warm you up for bigger pieces). They're not limited to just the guidelines for spines, joints and limbs, although that is their starting point. Having put down the basic guidelines allows you to 'build on top', so to speak. When you get to the longer timers, you can start fleshing out the model and try to replicate the photo reference from your foundation you just put down. The longer the timer runs, the more detail you can put in. You can define muscles, shading, facial features, hair etc. up until the timer runs out.
Does that answer your question?