Folk generally start doing big new tricks with lake jumping and foam-filled pits. Once you start reliably going in wheels first, you progress to hard surfaces.
Virtually no one does lake jumps. You don't want to use your regular bike for that, so usually it's an old beater with crappy parts.
Typical progression is foampits/airbags, then resi, then wood and then concrete (if needed).
This is a fairly good example
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKgDN7TEamwBXM was a bit of a joke, though. The mens field contained maybe 2 of the top 20, (Logan, Dhers), the scoring really weird.
Casing anything was severely punished (Except in Charlotte's case, but doing a first, you get away with it). Basically it got ruined once UCI got their grubby little hands on it. Matt Hoffman was involved early on, but quickly got sidelined by the suits.
A much better series is the Vans Pro CuP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBulSlB5QjcCreativity and risk is rewarded, rather than penalized.