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It's many different things, like throttle control, body positioning, transitions, vision, and several other things. You learn them separately and put them together. It's not a race class but it's also a not an MSF style course.

Several people took the course on cruisers and they got different things out of it.

I was always kind of unsure of that what the optimal body position for cornering, where my elbows should be etc. I never really thought about turning my lower body, for example.

I only mention getting a knee down as I think for a lot of riders it's a milestone. I read about it, but never really thought I'd actually do it.

For me, in the knee down thing in class it just kinda happened. A little surprising actually. The main point of it is that I was comfortable with the bike at that lean angle and I find it hard to imagine how I would have become comfortable leaning a bike that far over otherwise. I gradually learned over the course of the day that it was OK to lean it over like that. I had the rest of the basics in place. Piece by piece it came together.

You can use these skills for anything you want. You sure could use them to go faster, you could also just increase you're envelope of safe riding. Riding back in from NY there was some very questionable pavement on RT116 West of Plainfield. I felt much easier about going inside them holes in the road knowing my bike would easily handle it. I was far from speeding but I just felt so easy and in charge after having had the bike so far over. Do what you want with the extra riding headroom I guess.