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In the 1980s, cheerleading teams not associated with schools or sports leagues, whose main objective was competition, began to emerge. All-star cheerleading involves a squad of anywhere between 5-50 females and/or males. The squad prepares year-round for many different competition appearances, but they only actually perform for up to 2½ minutes during their routines. The numbers of competitions a team participates in varies from team to team, but generally, most teams tend to participate in nine or ten competitions a year. During a competition routine, a squad performs carefully choreographed stunting, tumbling, jumping and dancing to their own custom music. Teams create their routines to an eight-count system and apply that to the music so the team members execute the elements being performed with precise timing and synchronization.

Judges at the competition watch for illegal moves from the group or any of its members. Here, an illegal move is something that is not allowed in that division due to difficulty and safety restrictions. More generally, judges look at the difficulty and execution of jumps, stunts and tumbling, synchronization, creativity, the sharpness of the motions, showmanship, and overall routine execution.

All-star cheerleaders are placed into divisions which are grouped based upon age, size of the team, gender of participants, and ability level. The age levels vary from under 4 year of age to 18 years and over. The divisions used by the USASF/IASF are currently Tiny, Mini, Youth, Junior, Junior International, Senior, and Open International and Open.

Not only is competitive cheerleading popular throughout most of the United States, but in other nations as well. If a team places high enough at selected USASF/IASF sanctioned national competitions, they could be invited to the USASF Worlds and compete against teams from all over the world. Although, each different country and region of the US has its own generalities, the rules remain the same.