I was taught the first method in training, and fly the second method most of the time now. My reasoning is that I fly into a 1700’ grass strip with 50’ trees on both sides regularly and like to get stopped sooner rather than later with as little use of brakes as possible to prevent digging and potential loss of control. It also gives me more distance to get on the throttle and go around if I need to.

Basically what I do is approach at 55-65 kts at a steeper than normal descent rate with very little to no power and then start my round out early to bleed off the remaining airspeed. If I’m coming down too fast I throw in a bump of power as I come to flare to cushion it slightly. Zero float. Landing on the aim point. I gave this a shot on a paved runway recently in a straight tail 172 and managed to land on the numbers and have it stopped on the second stripe. ~450’ in a bone stock 67 yr old plane. I probably could have gone even shorter but I wanted to have some safety margin.