Oath of Strength: Athletes Jamie Lim, Pauline Lopez, and Kaizen dela Serna Rethink What Strong Skin Looks Like

In conversation with Aveeno, three athletes reveal how discipline, preparation, and resilience shape lasting strength.

“Resilience is difficult to teach in words to a young girl,” says Filipino karateka and two-time SEA Games gold medalist Jamie Lim. For her, being resilient was learned through years of showing up: losing, training, trying again, and eventually winning. “The secret sauce is in working hard and giving your best,” she shares. “It’s never about the shortcut.” Years of repetition have taught her that preparation cannot be rushed, and that confidence comes from trusting the work already put in long before stepping onto the mat.

That belief is shared by taekwondo athlete and two-time SEA Games gold medalist Pauline Lopez, although it takes a different form. Behind every six-minute match are years of preparation, and not all of it happens on the training mat. Intentional rest, she explains, is just as important as the sessions themselves. Recovery is part of training, and that discipline to pause becomes part of the discipline to perform. “If you’re not intentional, it’s quite hard,” Lopez says. It’s a mindset that also shapes how she approaches movement: “[I’m] grateful that I can still move, grateful that I can learn new things about my body.”

For obstacle course racer and SEA Games multi-medalist holder Kaizen dela Serna, resilience is rooted in continuous improvement. She embraces progress through small, consistent steps rather than immediate results. “Grit is also one of my favorite traits because you need to have perseverance for long-term goals,” dela Serna says. After recovering from a shoulder injury, she shares that she came to value working with her body rather than against it, recognizing that lasting progress is built through patience, recovery, and consistency instead of quick fixes.

Different disciplines, different routines, but the same mindset: preparation over shortcuts, consistency over perfection, and care over compromise. As their bodies and skin navigate the demands of training and competition, Lim, Lopez, and dela Serna each describe resilience as something built over time rather than achieved overnight.

Away from competition, each athlete shows how their mindset continues to shape how they approach daily life. Jaime has set her sights on new challenges beyond karate, from long-distance running to Hyrox. Pauline sees movement as a way to discover new parts of herself, whether through coaching, acting, or stepping into unfamiliar roles. For Kaizen, movement extends beyond the race course to hiking, freediving, and saying yes to new adventures. While their goals continue to evolve, the common thread remains the same: for them, strength isn’t confined to a single discipline, but carried into the way they choose to live.

The importance of a long-term approach is one that Aveeno explores with its recent campaign. Your Skin, Stronger shifts the conversation around sensitive skin, encouraging people to focus on building stronger, more resilient skin over time rather than simply seeking temporary relief from discomfort. As the leader in oat science for sensitive skin, Aveeno products are formulated with Triple Oat Complex that combines oat extract, oat flour, and oat oil. This combination helps soothe dry, itchy, and irritated skin while supporting the skin barrier, making it stronger and more resilient against factors that can trigger skin sensitivity.

Through the campaign, Aveeno believes that stronger skin can help people feel more confident, embrace new experiences, and focus on what they can achieve instead of being limited by sensitive skin.

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