Fooling Around is a Good Thing

You should also dedicate short amounts of time, pre- or post- or off-practice to just fooling around with the ball. Learn how it works, how different surfaces of your body (clothed, shoe-ed, unclothed, not shoe-ed, bony, flabby,etc) all impact the energy of the ball when it's both incoming and outgoing. Inches make a difference. For example, attempting to receiving an incoming ball with the knee vs the thigh leads to two completely different results, the former careening in another direction, the latter, settling nicely in the grass. That's not to say there aren't reasons, especially defensive ones, to use the knee, but choosing carefully is an important skill. I've seen one video of a player [who?] who purposefully fully turned his back to let a ball hit him in the shoulder blades because he knew that was the hardest, easiest available surface to use to send a difficult-to-control clear to the player following up behind him. You want to make sure you know how things work, so you can be effective.