I have a Spot Forex micro account I use to test strategies that I will eventually use for the YM emini Dow ($5 / tick)
market. In a Micro Spot forex acct I get gains / losses of $5 and when I get a system that seems to work I take it up the next level to the YM.

Another way is to download Ninja Trader and use the Market replay to trade your system without risking real money. --Fred

If you have a $5000 dollar futures account and you are dying to start trading live , you have about a 99.99999999 chance that you will blow that account up. Then you may try it again , and even a few more times and after about 20 grand in the hole you will start to get that its pretty much not possible with that small of account.
Now for a person that has been up and running profitable for a while they could start out with that small off account.
Now on the other hand if you opened up a forex account at Onanda or MbTrading(where I have mine) you can make that same $5000 account last your whole trading education and maybe even make some money... because you can trade much much much much ..... smaller size trades without blowing your account out in a few days or weeks .

Basially I agree with what MR.YOU said in his post too...and..

I suggest get a Forex account and just trade small micro lots of 3000 to 6000 which equalls 30 cents to 60 cents a pip
forget what everyone says about risking nore more then 1% that will blow out a new traders account for sure. You can risk much less than 1% with the micro forex and stay in the game a hell of alot longer when learning.
Quantismo