Step Turn, one phrase you have used does bother me: "you trade your stored energy into acceleration upward, to arrest the descent".....
The image that phrase brings to mind would be a descent to a point where your wheel - or main gear - is two feet above the tarmac. Followed by acceleration upward? now the wheel(s) are say ten feet above the tarmac.... if that happened I would expect a painful arrival. Could you please clarify this point? Sounds like the maneuver, unintentional, that we call a balloon!