Owing to part of my revisiting of basic picking mechanics over this last week, I’m beginning to wonder if I. don’t have just one picking mechanic that is my go to mechanic. I have noticed that in the course of an evening’s practice, I go from a forearm motion mechanic, to elbow picking (with tension in my shoulder), and some other picking mechanics too. It’s as though in my quest to play whatever it is that I’m working on, I forget what picking style I’m using and just do whatever, to get the job done. Should I embrace this, or be settling in on one mechanic?
Depends how effective the motions are - what sort of speeds are you hitting with them? Do they feel effortless? 
Hey, no, none of them feel effortless and I fatigue on all of them. Speed seem to vary, depending non how long I’ve been playing for. I can’t just pick up the guitar and shred with any one of them. I seem to default to elbow technique, but this tenses me up so badly that my arm feels like it’s going to explode. It also depends on twhat I’m playing; single string I seem to able to play trmeelo around 170 BPM (not relaxed), cross string licks can be anything from between 140 BPM - 170, again depending on the lick. I see people like Paull Brooks playing and their picking hand seems completely relaxed and shredding with no effort at all. I just don’t know how they have gotten themselves to that level. I can’t seem to figure out what works for me, using all of the guidance on this site from Troy and the team.
In my opinion, 99% of the people I see on the forum using elbow are doing it wrong, super tense with a low speed limit. I think encouraging pursuing it as a motion misses the point of acquiring an effortless motion mechanic and quite often sends people down the wrong path (no progress and potential injury).
I’d advise working on a single string and seeing if through experimentation with different motions (wrist variations, wrist/forearm, finger/thumb) and making adjustments you can get something that feels smooth and easy in your target speed range, starting with at least 170bpm 16ths and aiming to be able to maintain it for somewhere approaching 20secs. Just simple ideas like this, slowly expanding onto other strings over time:
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The way something looks isn’t a great indicator of speed or stamina or effectiveness, and I definitely don’t think it’s something you should compare yourself to. To me, players like Paul Gilbert look horribly uncomfortable, and yet it obviously feels totally fine to him (or else he wouldn’t do it.)
I can’t even make my pinky do that - but I’m guessing it was an automatic thing on his part.
Rusty Cooley is another example of this. His whole hand is basically a claw when he speed picks, and he’s capable of going insanely fast.
To use a personal example, when I use wrist deviation, it looks small and effortless. When I use DSX elbow, it looks much more “effortful” and less “economical”. And yet, wrist deviation is easily my slowest technique and has the lowest stamina. My elbow motion is the opposite - I can go much faster, and it feels like I can do it all day. The way something looks isn’t an indication of anything, other than how it looks.
Elbow shouldn’t feel painfully tense, by the way. If I had to guess, you’re probably used to using it as a tremolo technique and basically “putting the pedal to the floor” - putting out as many notes as possible. Instead, try to slow it down and work on it to a metronome, and while you’re doing that, work on relaxing your shoulders, traps, etc. You’d be surprised how little effort you need to make elbow DSX work.
Lastly, it’s totally normal to have multiple techniques. If you watch playthroughs of songs, a lot of musicians have different picking techniques for different things. Look at how a guitar player plays riffs vs. how they tremolo pick single strings. It’s almost never the exact same technique.
You should post a video over to Technique Critique! You might be doing something that be “diagnosed” at a glance. It’s hard to say over text!
Interestingly, when I started practicing this evening, I tried to focus on getting my thumb and forefinger to pick without the wrist moving. It never works in actuality, like circular picking, but my wrist moves way less when I think like that. It made tricky lines that cause me tension, a hell of a lot easier to do even though I was playing much slower than normal. Time will tell. I’ll keep you posted on how it works out