Athletes’ CBD Testimonials

If you’ve ever tried our Muscle & Joint Cooling Balm, you should know that CBD can be extremely useful in recovering from high-impact workouts or managing the aches and pains of athletic competition.

There are plenty of professional athletes who have come to the same conclusion, either by using a topical product like ours or by experimenting with CBD edibles and oils. In fact, you may be surprised by the sheer number of professional athletes who have made CBD a regular part of their lives, considering that the substance was only removed from the World Anti-Doping Agency’s ban list in 2018.

There’s no doubt that some of those athletes started using CBD out of competition before the ban was lifted. But consumer CBD products have only become broadly popular in recent years, so the number of testimonials from the sports community is still a testament to how fast the word has been spreading about its effectiveness.

What makes this even more remarkable is the diverse array of sports whose players have found CBD to be useful in one way or another. You can find testimonials about CBD products from boxers and mixed martial artists, from current and former players in the NFL, NHL, and NBA, from hurdlers, triathletes, and more. Some of those professional athletes have even had such promising results with CBD use that they’ve invested in farmland for cannabis or hemp, or even started their own companies to manufacture, research, or promote CBD as a natural alternative for pain relief.

Some athletes’ realizations about CBD were hard-earned. Former Yankees pitcher David Wells admits that he was addicted to Percocet at the height of his career, to the point of needing it 75 percent of the time just to reach his competitive baseline. But in later years, switching to CBD helped him to manage pain and ween himself off the powerful pharmaceutical. Since then, he has continued to enjoy its benefits without series side effects or concerns about dependency.

For some professional athletes, Wells’ substance abuse issues represent a warning about the struggles they might have encountered if they hadn’t discovered CBD in time. In a 2019 interview with Men’s Health, former NHL enforcer Ryan VandenBussche reflected on his myriad injuries and noted that CBD was better by far than what many players relied on for pain management and long-term recovery.

“As athletes, we were given opiates by our team doctors,” he said. “Looking back after years gone by, I’m surprised I’m still alive.”

Still other professional athletes describe CBD as something that helped them to enjoy a higher quality of life while struggling to overcome major health issues. For instance, former Denver Bronco’s wide receiver Rick Upchuch started using CBD to counteract the nausea brought on by chemotherapy when he was fighting cancer in 2011. Since achieving remission, CBD has reportedly remained a regular part of his lifestyle.

Stories like these indicate that professional athletes and ordinary people often have the very same experiences with CBD, even if their relevant needs and outcomes are on another level. It’s a sentiment that former NHL winger Riley Cote expressed when discussing the recovery process for professionals, amateur athletes, and ordinary people. “It doesn’t matter who you are,” he said. “We all have to manage these things to live a higher quality of life without taking a bunch of pharmaceuticals that typically create dependency and addiction.”