Took 8 years to realize I was stretching seams wrong

I've been laying carpet since 2016, mostly residential work around Tulsa. Last month I was doing a living room and a hallway for this older couple, and the seams in the hallway kept opening up no matter how many times I re-stretched them. I'd always used a knee kicker and just pulled until it felt tight, figured that was the whole job. Turns out I was fighting the carpet backing instead of letting the tackstrip hold the initial grab. The homeowner's brother showed up halfway through, he's been doing this for 30 years, and he watched me struggle for five minutes before saying 'you're kicking too hard and not using the power stretcher for the second pass.' I had a power stretcher in my van the whole time, never touched it on hallways because I thought it was overkill. That one tip saved me three hours of rework and now my seams sit flat. Anyone else have a basic thing they'd been doing wrong for years and only caught it when someone watched you work?

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