Mine is red jade too. I prune off any sideshoots that threaten to disturb the current general shape, which only amounts to about a 5 min job each winter on it, and very little material removed, though I can understand how you can also train it as you suggest. I also successfully set a mistletoe on it, and I've been interested to see how very slowly mistletoe grows, it's been there about 6 years now and still not big enough to harvest any for Christmas. (I've got a seed to germinate on one of my pear trees in the past year, though last time I germinated 3 seeds out of about 15 placed, and only one established.)