Bullets play on a different timescale game, so leaning forward to minimize force uptake makes no sense at all - you want the armor system dispersing the armor over the largest possible area, but most importantly you want to cover the largest possible portion of your critical-to-survival organs with the most possible armor. When teaching people how to move in MOUT, the tendency (especially with M16A2's) is to end up in a really stupid looking off-balance heel walk if they're focusing on running the optic too much, so the instruction to lean forward aggressively is primarily to actually have weight over the balls of the feet instead of somewhere stupid. It does help with recoil control, but that's a secondary consideration to just being able to move while encumbered with armor/helmet/pack/rifle. If you have armor, present armor to the threat when possible. If you can run proper body mechanics that lets you engage proficiently while doing so, you're in solid shape - from there it's about being able to move to a position where you hopefully don't need armor (takes more time than most would appreciate; it's still super obvious when actors have had a day or two of competent training, but still haven't grasped the concept that being in the right stance and holding the weapons the right way doesn't mean standing right in a doorway is a conceptually poor idea).
If you're worried about leaning too far in - even in best case situations for deflecting a comparatively low speed projectile (probably a high-mass ~230gr subsonic round) off the bounciest possible setup (steel Lvl 3 hard over HDPE IIIA) I can think of and it still won't deflect unless that's a really shallow impact angle - maybe if you're shot from a second story while in an aggressive forward leaning position you might find a rare instance where it would skip, but that's still converted a very high probability of paralysis and massive bleeding from lower torso into a low probability of femur of femoral artery hit (in terms of survivability the worst case scenario I can come up with still improved massively by armor and being squared up to the target). So, spalling (or really anything after an incoming projectile has dissipated a fraction of its energy) is a tertiary consideration at best.
Either way, it's not a reason to doubt any 11B or similar experience, but there is a pretty big gap between what somebody remembers about some training they didn't fully understand, and something that's so adequately understood and versed with an individual that they're qualified to teach and function as an SME with regard to.
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Semper Fi
"Being able to do the basics, on demand, takes practice. " - Sinister
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