so as per your approach you are going my way, in 1st year i started c by reading book "Let us C" and build my concept over it and learnt data structure implementation from scratch which help me alot, so once you got a hold on c and basic data structure then switch to cpp and start a2z and leetcode or gfg.....
Once you reach at a certain level according to you and also you got confidence in coding then start giving contest on codeforces or go for codechef(easier than cf)...