>>296561I used to do HEMA. Classes usually arent too expensive. Like a lot of clubs will just have you pay a monthly club fee and let you attend anything they offer. Most clubs in my circuit usually have a fee ranging from say $50-$100/month.
The real barrier to entry is your equipment. All the stuff you need to fence safely, like a jacket, mask, pants, etc, can end up being $700-$1000 depending on how you shop. A lot of it ends up being bespoke too, so it can take months to arrive. Like when i first started fencing, my pants took something like 3 months to ship.
Swords are also a cost. A decent sword is gonna be like $200-$500, or more if you want something crazy. And swords break. If you fence for 2 hours a week, expect to have a blade failure every year to year and a half.
Now with pole arms like spear, halberd, bayonet – these arent often fought competitively because theyre very dangerous. You can really make one thats flexible enough to be safe, and theyre pretty massive, to the point that striking with them can still cause serious injuries. Since theyre not fought competitively, most clubs dont train with them intensively. Like at my club, we had some spear and halberd simulators, but we mostly used them for experimental work at half pace when trying to figure out how certain things from manuals worked. We didnt really fight with them though.
As for learning from youtube: you can learn some things about guards and form, and can do some exercizes from it, but you cant really learn to fence from it.
A lot of what makes a person good at fencing is being able to judge timing and distance. You also cant really do much oppositional blade work on your own either. To get those elements down, you do need a partner.
Now, if you want to try to learn something like sabre, you could do this "backyard" style with some cheap boffers or singlesticks and some fencing masks for a minimal-gear setup and rope in a friend to help you train. Reasonably, you could learn a decent amount of basic HEMA sabre together like this using roworth and taylor 4th edt + some youtube videos to help iron out things that might be unclear from the text.
