Years back about a decade ago, I had a center manager who would coach me from time to time. I didn't always agree with what he wanted me to do (since I was somewhat hard headed), but I did put the information back on hold in the mind. A couple of things that he stressed to me was to opt for a longer slide, and to slow down my ball speed several notches. I used a fairly short slide and plant, and he told me that as I got older or faced some injuries, I would need the longer slide to help dissipate the energy of the approach. Well, sure enough, a couple of years later, I sustained some major injuries that forced me to extend my slide, as well as drop the ball speed down several notches.
If my coach hadn't forced me to learn a little bit lower impact game, I would have been starting over from scratch after the injuries hit. But, since I had practiced some of what he had tried to beat into my head, I had some previous experience to draw back from to modify my game drastically. It still took me the best part of a year to make the changes work, but I eventually got my average back up to where it had been prior to the injuries, and my new game is a lot lower impact game on the body now.
I used to overpower the lanes to the point where my coach would tell me that I needed an 80 foot lane length just to get a decent ball reaction. Well, he was right! I needed 20 more feet of dry backends to get the reaction that I was looking for. Now, I can get closer to the right reaction with a regulation 60 foot lane length.
