anchor the base to the opposite side.
bend what you can away from the ground. anything growing into it you might as well prune off. You can bend between alternating growth to avoid that in future. Anything below the initial bend will grow like shit too, so prune that off asap if it exists.
The idea of training is to break apical dominance so you can distribute the growth evenly among more than 1 growth tip. You should bend it over before the stem becomes to rigid, obviously,but you should also have 'enough' axillary buds to make it worth it... spreading growth out form 1 tip to 2-3 isn't really worth it. No biggie. Isn't necessarily slower, but you keep tying down the top until you have the growth you want to go vertically.. but now some of it is a week or more ahead of the rest of it which makes it more difficult to keep it even etc etc...
long-story short, wait a bit longer to LST. Have a plan for your canopy... with an auto you probably won't have time for more than 6-7 colas and still grow substantially enough that it doesn't hurt yield.