Playing games is the most important way to get great at chess, but they are more effective paired with different other practice strategies. The same is true for performance repertoire in the choral rehearsal.
Part of the tradition of learning chess is to play puzzles that require you to force checkmate in one, two, or three moves. It forces you to think in a different way, and helps you understand certain aspects of the game in a deeper way. They work because you can do them in series, solving many “mate in two puzzles” in the time it would take to play one game.
So often, choral rehearsals are focused on the repertoire we’ll be performing at the next concert. What value could there be in devoting an hour to the musical equivalent of mate in two puzzles? A four bar phrase that perfectly teaches a specific concept, say, or a guided listening of just 20 seconds of music, with repeated listenings focusing on applicable ideas.