As I write this, I’m coming up a few months shy of my 41st birthday, and I’m sad to report that I’m now a man of a certain age that has to go through a series of activities and movements just to be able to function on a daily basis. Any type of athletic activity requires some degree of actual, honest-to-God warmup. If I’m driving to the pool, to one of my run loops, or to the golf course, you can guarantee the seat warmers are on in the car to try to loosen up my back. There’s no such thing as just ducking out for a quick three miles and a shower in under 30 minutes and be back on calls.
And heaven forbid I try to push my way through without doing any of this routine. Or, worse, I try to do it on consecutive days.
Here’s a recent example of what happens when I try to treat my body like I’m half my age. I rode my bike on Monday in a virtual race. I then ran on Tuesday morning without doing anything for dynamic warm up, then rode my bike hard again on Wednesday. Thursday I opted for a progression run, and then biked Friday and played golf Saturday. By Saturday night I couldn’t move; my hamstrings were locked up, my Achilles hurt, and my thoracic spine was unhappy where I’d broken it 12 years before.
Pro tip: don’t do that. You’re gonna have a bad time.
It’s a long way of saying that I need to take my warm-up and recovery more seriously. And though I do an OK job at the warm-up stuff, I am terrible at after (unless you’re talking the post-run / ride / athletic activity 16 or 20 ounce curl, at which point I am an expert). So I tasked myself with trying to take a look at some products that are more focused on the recovery end of the marketplace, thinking that perhaps it might force me into some better habits along the way.
Extract Labs reached out to me, asking if I’d like a sample pack for review. I accepted that offer; no other consideration or input came from the Extract team before this publication.
Extract Labs: Who They Are, and What They Do
Extract Labs started as a garage project for Chief Executive Officer Craig Henderson back in 2016. Henderson, an Army veteran, long had an interest in cannabis and extraction technology. He started putting together his own extracts (shoveling snow into buckets to keep the condensers cold) out of his garage and, well, the rest is history, as they say.
So, as you can guess, Extract Labs is a (mostly) CBD focused company. I say mostly as they now are offering mushroom extracts as well, but the majority of the product lines fall under the CBD bucket. For the uninitiated, CBD is one of the primary cannabinoids among more than 100 found in hemp. Cannabinoids are naturally occurring chemical compounds in the Cannabis sativa plant. In general, CBD can provide users with benefits without the psychoactive effects of THC. Under the Farm Bill of 2018, CBD derived from hemp, containing no more than 0.3% THC, is legal at the federal level in the United States.
Extract Labs makes three different lines of CBD products: CBD Isolate, broad spectrum CBD, and full spectrum CBD. As you can probably guess from the name, CBD Isolate is just that — there’s CBD and nothing else from the hemp plant. Broad spectrum CBD products, meanwhile, offer a range of cannabinoids and terpenes while containing no THC. Full spectrum CBD products do contain THC, but no more than 0.3% of the total content.
My package of Extract Labs samples contained a bottle of full-spectrum CBD gummies and the muscle / recovery topical roll-on.
The Products: Do They Work?
Let’s start off the with the muscle and recovery topical roll on. The roller contains 2000 milligrams of CBD, and a total of 50 milligrams of THC. In addition to those extracts, it also has menthol and arnica included in it. It smells nearly exactly like Vicks Vaporub. Unlike Vicks, though, I actually feel like something is working.
I’ve been dealing with some type of soft tissue pain in my lower right arm ever since I broke that wrist back in the winter of 2023. I don’t know if it’s the lack of flexibility in that wrist since, but I wind up dealing with forearm pain if I try typing too much, or writing for a long period of time, or hitting more than 50 or 60 golf balls with a full swing. At any rate, I’ve been throwing a lot at it trying to make it feel better.
The roll on seems to work best in a recovery setting. Other CBD products, like this MedTerra CBD roller, are better at being a pre-activity activation item. And at $90 for a single roller, in my opinion, it’s a tough sell.
On the flip side, the CBD gummies are excellent. Let’s start with the two negatives, which both tie back to the fact that they are a full spectrum product. First, if your employer is stuck in the Dark Ages and a positive THC test would result in a bad drug screening, you can’t use them. Second, there is a very mild psychoactive effect as there’s just under 2 milligrams of THC per gummy. Don’t operate heavy machinery, etc.
But they do, in fact, work, especially as a restorative sleep aid. I’ll give you two difference examples. First, my wife had major knee surgery over the winter, with a repair of a meniscus root tear. She’d been prescribed your typical painkillers and anti-inflammatories after surgery. She said that the prescribed medication did less for her compared to the Extract Labs CBD gummies. As for me, I found the Extract Labs gummies helped immensely with sleep and feeling well recovered in the morning. They were far more refreshing than using a traditional THC gummy, or a melatonin, and with none of the cobwebs that I usually experience the morning after.
They made me feel better. And really, waking up each day, that’s all I can ask for.
All Images: Extract Labs