Originally Posted by ryan1234

Bingo! I've flown with a bunch of people who are afraid of the short field approach speed... The reference speeds are there for a reason, few cases (gusts, etc) do people need to carry more airspeed. One suggestion for the OP is generally with a 172 a heavy landing is softer with a more shallow approach and keep the nose down a bit in the ground effect and smoothly, slowly increase back pressure until the mains touch the ground. The idea here is to slow your descent rate without losing too much energy, and slowly bleed the energy without increasing descent rate too much.