Coming in for a landing is much more stressful. You actually have to put the engines on full throttle coming in, which is not intuitive, but necessary to get yourself back in the air should you not catch the tail-hook.
When I was in the military, they painted the outline of aircraft carriers on land-based runways so that pilots could practice over and over again landing on such a tiny space.
Check out below how tiny it is compared to the rest of the runway.