Do you really need to trim?

i don't know. i only pick off the ones that are yellow and are going to fall off anyway.

the type of trimming ur talkin bout comes with time... get a few grows under your belt first.. for now just pick of the dead and burnt ones... but yess you can train your plants to grow and yeild more by pruning.. but you dont have to...... after you master cloning then talking pruning.. then if you have 6 + fems pruning up 1 wont mind fuck you as bad ....

Don't be scared, get those dying leaves off, just leave the rest alone!

the buds don't need the light, it's the leaves that make the food and sugars that grow buds..

build a happy canopy of healthy leaves and you will have a happy plant that grows nice buds..
yes, it's true that buds at the lower part of a plant don't receive as much light as the ones at the top of a plant due to the nature of light, which fades very fast over distances.. so by removing any healthy leaves from the top of a plant which are receiving the most light, therefore doing the most work for the plant, only to try and get more light to the lower sections of a plant, you're really shooting yourself in the foot so to speak..
don't remove any leaves during the grows, and in fact, simply concentrate all of your efforts on keeping all of the leaves that you have nice and healthy throughout the grow, you're plants will be their healthiest, and therefore yield the best they can..

leaves are the power houses of plants.. they take in light and convert it to food and sugars via photosynthesis.. leaves grow buds, not the other way around..

Firstly, I wouldn't "pick off" any leaves live or dead, rather cut them off and leave about 1" of their stem. It is less traumatic to the plant as a whole when you don't cut right at the main stem. I agree that I'd get some grows under my belt, for now, only trim the yellow leaves. Otherwise the plant will devote energy towards healing the leaves that are yellowing. You won't do any damage if you do it this way. Later on, you'll learn the art of pruning, that is, selective removal of leaves that are too low for adequate light, block bud sites, and a means to train the plant to produce more sites to grow those delicious buds...
It is normal for leaves to yellow as time passes, it is a simple matter of upwards growth. It should start at the bottom (oldest) and work its' way up. If you see a lot of yellow, be sure it isn't something else, like weakness in the nutrients/soil (IDK what method your grow is) or at the worst, pathogens or insects! Lots of information here; spend some time reading all the older stuff in journals too. Pretty much any question ever asked here, has already been answered. Good luck to you and hope this helps...

No. You can just leave all the leaves, the good, the bad and the ugly. The plant will get rid of them when it's ready. Can you? Yes. I remove all fan leaves that are less then 50% green that are on the lower half of the plant, less then 25% green for the upper half. Fan leaves are what take in the light so you don't want to get rid of too many.
As for 'pushing energy into the buds' that's called pruning, and it works. I did not prune until my 3rd or 4th grow because there are more important things to learn first. I myself remove ALL BRANCHES on the bottom 1/3 of the plant in late veg/early flower gradually. This allows more energy to be concentrated on the upper sites where the big buds roam. I also lollipop my plants which is removing young bud sites from the lower part of the branches to promote more growth up higher, again, where the big bids roam.

Some people also just cut the non-green leaf areas from each fan leaf, others pull fans off, some cut or pinch them. It's all opinion of what works best and why. If you are a novice let the plant decide when to remove the leaves and concentrate on other things.

Thank you thank you thank all very helpful

I didn't think you needed the leaves to grow bud. I thought the bud simply grew off the stem like a twinkie.... lol jk