Cannabis Training Techniques: LST, Topping, SCROG & More

Plant training is one of the highest-impact skills a home grower can develop. By manipulating how your cannabis plant grows, you dramatically increase the amount of usable light each bud site receives — and more light means more yield. Training techniques fall into two broad categories: low-stress training (LST), which bends and repositions growth without cutting, and high-stress training (HST), which involves removing or damaging plant tissue to trigger a growth response. Both approaches work, and the best results often come from combining them strategically across your grow.

If you're new to training, start with LST — it's low risk, highly effective, and will immediately improve your harvests. Once you're comfortable reading your plant's responses, layer in topping, ScrOG, and lollipopping to build a complete, high-yield training approach. Every technique here compounds on the last.

Lollipopping is the practice of removing all growth from the lower one-third of the plant — small underdeveloped shoots, popcorn bud sites, and fan leaves that sit deep in the canopy where meaningful light never reaches. The logic is straightforward: these sites will never produce quality buds, but they still consume energy, water, and nutrients. By removing them, you redirect all of the plant's resources upward to the main canopy bud sites where they'll make a real difference.

Perform a major lollipop at the transition to flowering — clean out everything below your screen or below the lowest main bud sites before the stretch begins. A lighter tidy-up at week three of flower removes any remaining stragglers. Use clean scissors, work efficiently, and avoid removing too much healthy growth at once.

Low-stress training (LST) is the ideal starting point for beginner growers because it carries minimal risk — no cuts, no recovery time, and mistakes are easily corrected. The principle is simple: bend stems away from the centre of the plant and anchor them down so the plant grows outward rather than upward, exposing lower bud sites to direct light.

What you need: Soft garden wire, coated tie wire, or purpose-made LST clips that hook over the rim of your pot. Avoid anything that can cut into stems — no zip ties or rough wire.

When to start: Begin LST early in vegetative growth, once the plant has developed four to six nodes and the stems are still flexible. Starting early means you're shaping the plant while tissue is pliable, and the plant has maximum time to respond.

Step-by-step:

• Identify the main stem and the direction you want to train it — typically away from the pot's centre.
• Gently and slowly bend the main stem to a roughly 90-degree horizontal angle. Work gradually; if you feel significant resistance, stop and try again the next day.
• Secure the stem low to the soil using your wire or clip anchored to the pot rim.
• Over the following days, the plant will turn its new growth upward toward the light. Identify which new shoots are growing tallest and bend those outward as well.
• Repeat this process throughout veg, working outward from the centre like spokes on a wheel. Your goal is a wide, flat, even canopy with all major bud sites at a uniform height.

Screen of Green (ScrOG) is widely considered the most effective technique for maximizing yield in a fixed-footprint indoor tent, and it pairs perfectly with LST and topping. The concept is straightforward: a horizontal net or screen is stretched across your grow space, and you weave your plant's canopy through the screen as it grows, training all growth to fill the net evenly at a consistent height.

Setup: Position your screen at 30–40 cm above the base of your pots — high enough to give the plant room to develop structure below, low enough that a dense canopy above it sits in your light's optimal intensity zone. Trellis netting with 5 x 5 cm squares is the standard choice and is inexpensive and widely available.

During veg: As new growth pushes up through the net, tuck each shoot horizontally into an adjacent open square rather than letting it grow vertically. Work methodically across the entire net, filling empty squares evenly rather than concentrating growth in one area. Combine with LST below the screen to keep the sub-canopy open and encourage more shoots to rise up into the net.

The golden rule: Do not flip to flowering (12/12) until your screen is approximately 70% full. This is critical. Cannabis stretches aggressively during the first two to three weeks of flower — your remaining 30% of open screen will fill naturally during this stretch phase. Flipping too early leaves yield on the table; flipping too late risks an unmanageable canopy. At 70% coverage, you're perfectly positioned to let the stretch do the final work.

A properly filled ScrOG turns a single plant into a dense, even wall of top-quality bud sites, all receiving maximum light intensity.

Topping and FIMing are the two most common high-stress techniques and both aim to multiply the number of main colas your plant produces.

Topping involves using clean, sharp scissors or a blade to remove the very tip of the main growing shoot — specifically the newest node at the top of the plant. Removing this apical tip eliminates the dominant growth hormone signal, and the two nodes directly below rapidly develop into two new main colas of equal vigour. You can top those two new mains later to produce four, then eight, and so on.

FIMing (named for the phrase *F*** I Missed*) is a less precise cut that removes approximately 70–75% of the newest shoot tip rather than the full tip. Done correctly, this can produce three to four new main colas rather than two, making it theoretically more efficient — though results are somewhat less predictable than a clean top.

Recovery time: Expect your plant to pause upward growth for three to seven days after either technique while it redirects energy. Topping is slightly more stressful with a longer recovery window than FIMing. For this reason, avoid topping during heat stress, root issues, or any other period of plant stress.

Best strains: Both techniques work well across most genetics, but they're particularly effective on indica-dominant and hybrid strains with compact internodal spacing. Pure sativas and long-flowering strains can handle topping but require careful timing to avoid cutting into your flowering window. Always top during mid-to-late veg, allowing at minimum two weeks of recovery before flipping to 12/12.

Left to grow naturally, cannabis expresses apical dominance — the main central cola grows fastest and tallest, chemically suppressing the lateral branches below it. The result is a classic Christmas-tree shape: one dominant top, with smaller, underdeveloped bud sites further down the plant that never receive enough direct light to reach their potential. This means a significant portion of your plant's energy and canopy space is simply wasted. Training breaks apical dominance and encourages the plant to develop multiple dominant colas of equal height and vigour. The goal is an even, flat canopy where every bud site sits at roughly the same distance from your light source. This uniform light penetration means every flower site gets the intensity it needs to pack on weight, dramatically improving both yield and quality across the entire plant.