Thanks Catbuds that is reassuring. OMB the dropping leaves don't show any unusual coloring out side if paleness. Often they have hints of light damage and I think they're really old fan leaves that used to be on top weeks and weeks ago. I also thin stuff out from that zone routinely because I do have a few small tops that are trying to get up through the canopy. I watch these close for herms but so far they look normal. But often the leaves that fall are completely dried up and curled. It's weird because I never see one on its way to such a state, they just suddenly appear. I'm leaning on what Catbuds and others on the forum have stated that this is all fairly normal at this stage (4 weeks flower). Some of it could be fallout from my mishap last week when I left the UVB lights on for 24 hrs. But curiously, the leaves and buds closest to the UV bulbs show absolutely no signs of distress. So, I think I'm over-reacting to a normal process.

d00g I am of the belief that training/pruning/shaping in all horticultural contexts is an art more than a science. It takes a lot of practice, patience and careful observation. I expect this is true with Cannabis. Maybe even more so. With my AfgooeyXLemon Skunk plants, the stems were tough even at an early age, and supercropping was hard simply because the fibers were so dense. I actually had to use pliers and a soft cloth at times. I supercropped from the time the produced their first mature leaves. At the time I had no good reason to do this other than I wanted to practice. I have heard everything under the sun about the "right" time to start doing this, and I have waded into several contentious arguments (in other forums) about the dos and don't s of SC during flower ( some say no way because it saps energy from the plant, others say yes way because as OMB points out the first two weeks can have rapid vertical growth). But what I see now is that most of the SC scars are like solid wood and the direction of the stem ultimately didn't change much. That's what I mean by "recovering". This batch in veg (the Purple Wreck X Lemon Skunk) have more delicate stem at the same age, and "take well" to the SC in the sense that the stem direction clearly becomes horizontal-ish and stays that way. But I have broke a few and bent a couple so severely that they can't seem to hold their own weight. This may be a varietal issue, or it may be conditions because I vegged the AF X LS batch under 420W T5 in a warm room (74F-84F), and the PW X LS batch is vegging under 400W MH in a relatively cool room (64F-72F). Most likely it is a combination of factors. In the lab, I top and prune to train my plants. With Cannabis I avoided this because I couldn't deal with the thought of losing what might end up being a huge cola in the end. But topping does seem to be a more direct and controllable way to train.