You're on the right track but the main thing about the gesture phase is to worry less about proportion and detail and only focus on the essence and movement of the pose. Instead of thinking about contour lines think more in terms of masses of volumes and how each of the big masses and limbs relate to each other. You should be able to simplify a gesture with nothing but straight lines, C curves and S curves. Then you continue to develop your drawing on top of that while making the necessary corrections to proportions/anatomy. Gesture is probably the hardest stage to get a good grasp of so don't beat yourself up too much if you feel you're not getting it.