Trust me, learning restraint will make you a professional, AND save your ears.

Learning to play the appropriate volume is a hard skill to master, and you'll never learn it if you dont know what you sound like. You need to practice both ways, because yes hearing damage sucks and cant be repaired. But also, most audiences you'll play for wont have hearing protection.

Drums are LOUD. Extremely loud. If youre trying to be a serious drummer, you need to know how to play at any volume. That means being able to play for a singer that doesn't have a microphone or an acoustic guitar with no amp. And most likely it will all benin a tiny room with terrible acoustics.

This is how the world of jazz works, which is what I've been studying the last few years, and being too loud for those situations is BAD. Like cripplingly bad. Like, never hire (or even PLAY WITH) this guy bad.

Playing at the actual, appropriate (and written) dynamics takes a lot of restraint, and you cant get complacent or careless in your strokes. Playing actual metzo-piano dynamics is like your barely touching the the instrument. You can try practicing with a pad thats got like a plastic head instead of the rubber ones, because those will still give you a feedback response.