Each time you top a plant it has to recover and that can take a couple days. I prefer to supercrop the main stem at the height of the secondary buds and that way it's just one time of stress and I can set my canopy height right before I flower.
Here's a pic of the healed break from doing it.
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There's nothing wrong with topping, I've just found this to work best for me. To answer your question, 3 times of topping will get you 8 primary stems. This is a pic of the plant that's in the above photo. It was an OG Kush I just finished this past month.
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