Tony

If it literally has hundreds of new shoots and branches appearing all the time, most will probably need to be pruned off completely. Otherwise your tree will end up looking like a bush. What you want to do is get a picture in your mind, or better yet draw a sketch of what you want the tree to look like and what you are trying to accomplish. Basically remove branches that can't be used in your design.

Branches that are growing from the wrong place will need to be cut off. Branches that are growing from the right place but in the wrong direction will either need to be wired into place or pruned back and regrown using the clip and grow method. [it's usually a combination of both] I'm not quite sure what stage of development your tree is at. If you are trying to get a branch to ramify or fork into two branches then let it extend to 5-6 leaves beyond the point you intend to prune [or more if you are trying to thicken the branch] then prune it back to where you want the new branches to start. If you want it to fork, always leave at least two leaves on the branch, you'll get new branches from the two leaf nodes. If you are only changing direction of the existing branch then you can cut it back to one leaf. In that case you'll get one new branch to extend from the leaf node.

Tony