The only difference in the way I was taught to pinch my tops is that I end up reaching inside with my fingers and pinching off central/inner growth while leaving the outer growth which I will clarify with my picture.I get two new sprouts with much less recovery time and can and will always pinch again at the next nodes to get my extra main colas. I only said I do it differently not that you were wrong. The only reason anyone is saying anything about allowing more nodes to grow is because it takes longer for the plant to recover when it hasn't had time to establish itself. I know i'm not spouting science in regards to this, but a plant trying to become established and get its roots settled has a harder time recovering from the shock of what topping does because its still trying to figure out what it even is supposed to be doing. Basically it confuses itself for a longer period of time than it would giving it a couple nodes worth of experience and maturity to get over what just happened to it. I can't speculate on the trade off of the time loss occuring by topping it a bit earlier vs the benefits of training it to try and start doing its thing earlier and closer to the soil level. It sure would be nice if we could just get it to start branching out like that right off the bat, but it probably is much more beneficial for the plant to let it establish itself a couple nodes more. Specifically in your case, the plant is already trying to handle whatever issue it is having judging by the appearance(although it still looks just fine, not the best but ur good) and now its going to have figure out where it wants to put its energy towards, figuring out what the hell happened to the top of it, or how to try and feed the growth it already has. This is semi-speculative theory on my end but ur just going to end up waiting a bit longer for it to start doing its thing again.