nooo dont be scared, we all screwed up defoliation and super cropping when we learned, anyone who says they didn't is just trying to sound cool. defoliation - it takes a bit of experience to know which leaves to take, and when is just as important. but it does work to concentrate the plant's energy into where you want, also allows better penetration for growing indoors, something you don't need to worry about when your light is the sun. but you don't get any of those lighter green buds at the bottom. also lollypopping is also something needed to be done at the correct time and the correct amount or else it will harm your yields. you basically want to be able to stop training when they go to flower and make sure they've recovered from any last training you've done.
you also don't want to be removing much after stretch apart from those tiny sites that try to form. after week 4-5 you really don't want to be removing anything anymore. you can do a few after the week 3 if they're very large fans blocking bud sites. but yeah. but again depends what you do, some people leave it all chop the topo half drop the lights and wait 10 days.
