The difference between a plant that’s been trained or not is night and day. To me I would describe it how Indica vs Sativa look. Indica is typically a thicker, bushier, shorter plant. The Sativa grows taller/lankier with more node spacing. Nowadays there’s enough information suggesting: Why can’t a sativa or Indica do both? Not to say there isn’t notable characteristics to identify the phenotype, but short and bushy is the objective for yields.
Low-stress training (LST) and super-cropping forces the plant to adapt to a new shape. My favorite, and cheapest way to do this is by grabbing a stem 2-3 nodes from the new growth, twisting and lightly pinching until the stem is drooping over.
DO NOT do this until the stem splits or tears. If that does happen the plant can still heal the damaged area, but it may temporarily stunt the growth. In some cases a bandage must be applied to help the plant regrow or else it will wilt away.
Another effective way I spread out the top canopy is with twist-ties and or plant tape. I started using regular-ties but I switched to plant-ties. They are the same to utilize but the plant ties are made with rubber and tend to have a stronger hold. These tend to be more effective than the supercropping method of pinch-n-twist. However the plant can get weaker when stretching out the canopy without a little damage to the plant tissue. That’s why doing both is critical to my green ladies.
The next (and last) week before switching to Flower is the final chance to do the more aggressive training. Almost all my canna-ladies have been given 2-3 toppings for a chance to get triple the main colas. Doing this in flower would take away the energy used to make bud, and divert towards stem and leaf production.
Casper Grows In Coco 