found this on Overgrow.com

WHAT IS Less Stree Training (LST)?
Low Stress Training (LST) simply involves tying the plant??s main leader down, so it is more or less parallel to the ground. This allows the side shoots to develop into leaders, which eventually become colas. The result is a bushy plant with multiple colas. The more shoots you tie down, the bushier the plant becomes.

LST is an alternative to topping your plant and more advanced topping techniques like FIM. While topping a plant will split the leader into two new shoots (and FIMming can produce even more), some growers notice that their plants seem to stall out for a few days after being topped or FIMmed, while plants that are trained with LST don??t seem to slow down at all. This is a hotly debated topic, and the purpose of this FAQ is not to take sides. All I really want to do here is show how LST is done. All growers should experiment with a variety of propagation techniques to see what works best for them.

I plant my seeds in the corners of square pots and wait until they are about 2 weeks old before I start tying them over. By two weeks they generally have 3 or 4 nodes and the stems are thick enough to be pulled over without collapsing or breaking. The first two pictures are a ten-day-old ThaiTanic growing in an unferted mixture of Canadian spagnum peat, perlite, worm castings and dolomite lime. The third is month-old White Rhino.

There are many different ways to tie a plant, and there??s no ??right? way to do it. When I first got interested in LST, I developed a technique involving a rubber band and some nylon string. All you do is run a thick rubber band around the rim of the pot, tie the plant??s leader with the string, then tuck the other end of the string under the rubber band and pull the plant over. As the plant grows you have to retie it periodically to keep the main leader down, but you can easily make adjustments with just a little tug on the other end of the string.

OG member Intrinsic modified the rubber band technique to suit his growing style. Instead of tying the plant, he takes a longer string and loops it around the leader once, then puts both string ends under the rubber band. This saves tying and re-tying the string as the plant grows, and he??s had some impressive grows under flouros exclusively doing it this way.

The flouro part is important, because you need a dense, even canopy when you??re trying to flower under fluorescent lighting. LST makes that possible, because you can tie down as many new leaders as you want. You can produce plants that look like they??ve been scrogged if you really get into it.

Personally, I usually just go with one tie-down, keeping it in place until flowering begins. When you pull the strings and ??let ??er go,? be sure to untie the string(s) from the plant. If you don??t, the plant will grow around them (like a tree grows around a strand of barbed wire), and it will weaken it. That raises the question: How long can I train my plant? You can continue training it for its entire life if you like, but in most cases, there's not much point in continuing once your main colas have been identified.

When the main leader is pulled over, my plants develop between 5 and 8 main colas, which is bushy enough for a 4-plant grow in a 3x3 space under a 400 watt hps. Once your colas are established, it??s up to your skills as a grower to make them as fat as possible.

for pics and stuff go to.

http://www.overgrow.com/edge/showthr...hreadid=670404