Torrents are not hard to understand, they just work much different than the usually peer to peer systems. Basically when you go to a torrent site, find the thing you want, and download the torrent. When you download the torrent, make sure you have a piece of software called a bittorrent client. Examples are Azureus and utorrent. Get one of those, and use it to open the torrent file you downloaded. Once you do that, the client will set it up for you, it will begin downloading the file you are requesting to location that either you set, or the software set for you(changeable in option menus). All data from a torrent comes from any amount of peers your client can connect to. You will become one share peers the longer you leave that torrent active. The client will take what data you have downloaded and share it with peers making requests. Things that help torrent speed are:
Port forwarding
Certain internet services providers
Good luck!