Learn martial art at home?

Tae Bo

It's going to be very hard to teach yourself anything of quality by yourself without a base knowledge to work from. Your also going to need at least one training partner to learn anything of value.

Your cheapest option is probably to find someone who is a medium to advanced student that wants a training partner to workout with. Meet with them on a regular basis, learn what you can and train.

However, your probably better off starting with lessons from a teacher. When I was learning I was paying $40/month for two classes a week. Save some money, spend less on clothing and spend it on some quality instruction. If your in or near a college you could also look into joining a club there, usually the cost is minimal.

The martial arts being practical or being practical as a day to day exercise?

I'd hate to think you need martial arts on a day to day basis.

Buy a heavy bag until you're ready to spend money on lessons.

Even then you need spend time learning how to properly wrap your hands and throw a punch or you could hurt yourself or you may learn bad habits from doing it repeatedly the wrong way. It's much easier spending time learning to do it the right way the first time then having to unlearn doing it the wrong way.

How close do you live to Kunk? He could probably show you some Sambo moves.

This is not a Lil' John song, you cannot do it all by yourself.

FTFY

^^ It really will be useless. You need to practice under pressure against people trying to beat you. Really, anything else is a dangerous waste of time.

ya. Even in the first Karate Kid movie Daniel-san was getting his ass kicked with this method. I don't even think buying a bag is going to really help you much. You will just tire yourself out with bad technique. No one there to tell you to keep your elbows in and your chin tucked....no one to throw back at you when your hand drops etc. You will just teach yourself badly and then get progressively worse, develop bad habits and then become harder to retrain when you join a gym later. I second the 'bug your friends' system. I am generally pretty happy to help people out when they want to start training, and always looking for new sparring partners, so, if you happened to live in Vietnam, I'd be pretty damn useful Otherwise - look at the cheaper martial arts...boxing and judo at local community centers are probably going to be your cheapest options - and are both great styles in their own way. Maybe tkd or karate as well, which I am a bit wary of as a general rule, but I suppose if you find a good teacher, that trumps style arguments. If you are a student, then also check out what your college has as martial arts options too - that tends to be way cheap. Slight twist on that if you are not a student, maybe the local colleges offer public training in the student classes for slightly higher fee (but probably still way cheaper than a fight gym). edit - just saw OP's most recent post - ok...nothing in your college...ignore that! but note, there is no fight style on earth that you will learn in five mins a day. edit2 - random dumb idea - is there anything you are particularly good at that you could craigslist/college noticeboard barter? ie 'teach me to box and ill teach you Spanish' kind of thing?

If you can get a buddy, you can learn Krav Maga at a home. It may not be quite right, but it's more about enthusiasm and less about form. It's totally useless without a sparring/grappling/practice partner though. It would also be at least 45 minutes a session. It's hard to learn anything in 5 minutes a day. Edit- Jiu-jitsu can be learned the same way. You form might be a bit off, but a free roll session at the end will help yall discover where the weakness in your form is.

What if he uses that device that they say Bruce Lee used in that movie Dragon. The long wooden tube with the wooden pegs sticking out.

wing chung dummy

and the best way to learn martial arts IMO is sparring / light sparring so you can get a feel for real time reactions and movements
u can hit a bag all you like but until you have someone coming at you in real time, you are not going to be comfortable to in a real life situation.....

I'll wing your chung you dope.