Cobra Kai’s Rayna Vallandingham Shares the Secret to Crushing These Spin Kicks

Earlier than Rayna Vallandingham joined the forged of Netflix’s Cobra Kai final yr—making her debut as villain Zara Malik in season 6 half 2—the athlete-turned-actor had by no means truly seen the present.

That’s as a result of the teenager motion dramedy, which is a follow-up to The Karate Child franchise and facilities on martial arts battles, hit a little bit too near residence. “It felt like my very own life,” Vallandingham tells SELF. So the 13-time taekwondo world champion, who holds a fourth diploma black belt (that’s a brilliant excessive karate rank), prevented watching it…till she booked the position of Zara. Then? “I simply fell in love with it,” she says.

In flip, viewers fell in love with Vallandingham, who garnered reward for her “standout” efficiency and “fierce depth.”

With 3.7 million followers on Instagram and one other 3.1 million on TikTok, Vallandingham is a powerful advocate for participation in martial arts, repeatedly posting movies that showcase the facility, finesse, and grit the follow calls for. “I do not know who I’d be with out it,” she says. “It teaches you self-discipline and perseverance and respect, and never solely to respect others, however to respect your self and worth your self.”

With Cobra Kai season 6, half 3 premiering February 13—marking the top of the present’s almost seven-year run—we chatted with Vallandingham about how she educated for the position, what it takes to grasp these high-flying kicks, and all of the methods martial arts has bettered her as an athlete (and a human!)

She channels the arrogance of her 8-year-old self to crush these scenes in Cobra Kai.

Vallandingham, who simply turned 22, has been training martial arts for 20 years—her dad and mom put her in tae kwon do classes as a toddler. So reserving Cobra Kai was a homecoming of kinds. “It actually simply felt like, okay, I get to simply go on this set and simply be myself,” Los Angeles-based Vallandingham explains.

That mentioned, regardless of Vallandingham’s decades-long expertise in aggressive martial arts, nothing might have ready her for the demanding choreography of Cobra Kai. “You are doing it over and time and again, completely different digicam angles, completely different lenses, completely different depth,” she says. “It is actually a lot enjoyable, however undoubtedly very intense.”

To get by these demanding moments on set, she would take a deep breath, sip an vitality drink, and channel her internal 8-year-old, the model of Rayna that liked competitors. When filming all kinds of flips, kicks, aerials, choreography, and weapon work, “that aggressive mindset actually took over once more, and I obtained again to who Rayna actually is on the core,” she explains.

This strategy helped her get in the correct headspace. “I used to be actually immersed on this world, and I actually grew to become this character,” she says. “I really feel like all of us form of felt like we had been actually on this world. It was undoubtedly a cool vitality within the air.”

Weight lifting performs a clutch position to enhance her martial arts.

Vallandingham discovered all her superior materials arts strikes—like again flips and the 540, a soar spinning kick the place you land on the identical leg—at a younger age. And that honed the muscle reminiscence that helps her nonetheless do them right this moment, she explains. However constant energy coaching additionally performs a key position, particularly since she has a historical past of tendonitis, a situation which inflames your tendons and might trigger ache and swelling.