Exactly. I did the built in tutorial and read a bunch of online info on Vim but never really grokked it for years until I decided to really focus on it for a while. There are a few concepts like talking to Vim like a person (which I included in the free portion of the course) that really helped it click for me.

There's a ton of free info on Vim around and it's perfectly viable to learn it on your own that way, it will just take a lot longer. Obviously I'm biased, since I made Vim Valley to be exactly what I think is the fastest and most enjoyable way to learn Vim.