Stiff stem day 14??

Thanks I’m bit afraid to do that as being autos and not tall enough to pinch anywhere at mo but defo something worth thinking about if they stretch to slow the main cola

Some plants get rigid before others. give'em a feel as they grow and you can act sooner if it occurs again. Could be the ratio of nutes you feed if not solely related to genetics. excess silica by chance? bit of a guess here.. i tried a cursory search but no immediate hits for "nutrients regid stems" and didn't se emuch. Training is all about apical dominance. forget the words and learn the cause and effect of why it happens. Tallest node from ground will take the most resources. that is called Apical Dominance. Bend something down, resources will spread disproportionately to next highest node or nodes of equal height from ground. If you cut off a termina node (topping), growth hormone (auxins) will spread out to the lower nodes where the growth will be split up, but again.. the ones at the top will gain dominance shortly. manipulating this is all training does. tie something down to level it out for even growth or maybe temporarily tying something down so other things can catch up. people want to make up new words for things that are already explained.. . like "FIM'ing" .. it's just topping that only partially damages the terminal node and heals and you get the auxin distribution as well as retain the top node etc.. soemtimes 2 limbs pop out of the damaged growth node at top plus the 2 (if still symmetrical growth) branches immediatly below get a boost of growth in that time. it's still just damage-induced manipulation of apical dominance and taking advantage of funky distribution of auxin for as short time. learn cause and effect... words are just useless symbols, otherwise.

Yes, I have run into this problem before I just let it grow naturally but the technique you're referring to is called ponytailing, and it does work and is essentially a form of LST for smaller plants or plants like yours. Mr. Canuck on youtube shows an example with a plant that is too small to start LST, just remember to remove the pontail every night before lights out.