Whats a stoner to do?

What is the least stressful way to increase the growth of the canopy. My plants have a lot of little leaves lower down on the plant and I feel like they may be using valuable energy that the rest of the plant could be using. should I remove these.

more pics

Your pics are huge...so I didn't view them...
Leaves don't use "valuable energy"
Defoliation is best left to indoor growers....so their artificial lighting can penetrate to the lower bud sites..
If you want to play around with them, look up low stress training...

thanks for your advice. I think i will just let them just let them be.

Leaves make and store valuable energy

LST is a option

trim up the lower parts of the plant. all the small branches that will only make fluffy minibuds. this will help the canopy out a bit. The only way this would be stressful is pulling by hand and peeling the bark on the main stem. just do some snipping and the energy being sent to those little branches will be used more productively.