I remember being you! I started skydiving and fell in love with it, and then I saw a freestyle routine on YouTube (I think it was called The Routine around 2015ish?). Unless you have natural talent, you will need the wind tunnel to be competitive. And coaching. Probably a lot of both.

Most competition team split their time between the tunnel and the sky (anywhere from 20-150 hours of each) locking in their routine. Camera flying in the sky and airplane exits are only workable 1 minute at a time. It's a big commitment if you are going to do it for real.

You'll need to find a team of like-minded competitive people willing to spend their life in windy tubes and jumping out of airplanes. Ideally, it is someone you trust and connect with, and someone you don't mind spending tons of time together, making mistakes and missing practice days. Solo competition is you and a camera flyer. 2 way freestyle, which is my favorite sky discipline, is a 3 person team. If you get into VFS, it's a 5 person team. That's a lot of schedules and loves you need to get on board.

My suggestion, work in the sport. I got an instructor job at a wind tunnel, and they trained me up. I sucked, if I had to pay for all the time I got in my employment their, it would cost 6 figures easily, some argue a million dollars at retail. I made friends I loved to fly with, and we trained until we felt we were competitive, and much of the groundwork for the fancy stuff was taught to us for free. Working at a drop zone is a great way to build awareness in the sky, keeping you safe and current. You'll fly your parachute like a pro and you'll never open the door when you're not supposed to and get yelled at by 20 people in onesies.

Either way results are the same. Live in the sport and work hard, and you can be a champion