tone upper arms

I started by using a simple exercise from my Wii game: Stand with feet apart, raise your right arm straight up, holding it up with your left hand, (kind of across your face), bend your right arm back, then back up straight, keeping your elbow stable in place. You can start with 10 reps, stop and rest for 30 seconds, and do the same on the left arm. Once you can do this without the burning sensation in your arms, you are ready to try 20 reps. No weights, as yet. Crawl before you walk. I did this and got my arms ready for more strength training later. This is what I did and it worked for me.

In martial-arts we practice holding a rod (between 2-4 feet long) out in front of us while in a horse-stance for as long as you can hold it, or just set a limit (3 minutes at a time until it feels like nothing to you), and of course push ups... There are many various types of push ups you can do.