How to Use CBD Muscle Cream

How to Use CBD Muscle Cream

Fitness isn’t just a fad. In fact, 242 million Americans over six years old— a record number—participated in some kind of physical activity in 2023. The 124 sports, fitness and outdoor activities included in the survey range from skiing to golf to hiking, not to mention swimming, jogging, soccer and the ever-more-popular pickleball. 

That’s a lot of muscular movement and a lot of muscle fatigue. Enter CBD muscle cream.

As Forbes noted in 2019, CBD has become so mainstream as a component of workout recovery that national gym chains include it in their merchandising offerings. Approximately 60% of respondents to a Forbes Health survey said they had tried CBD at least once, while similar percentages of adults between 26-76 said they used CBD specifically for pain relief. 

Topical applications of CBD are especially popular as a means to target localized effects after a workout. Instead of taking a gummy or CBD tincture and waiting for it to work its way through the digestive system, many active adults and athletes prefer faster-acting topicals that absorb directly into the body part that feels most tense or tired. 

Despite the popularity of CBD topicals for post-workout care, many people still have basic questions about how to use CBD muscle cream most effectively. Advice about dosage, application and frequency of use can vary widely. Here’s what our experts at Entourus recommend:

How to Use CBD Muscle Cream: What’s the Right Dosage?

It can be difficult to figure out how much product to use for all sorts of topicals, not just CBD cream. For example, many adults fall short of the recommended dosage for sunscreen products—a teaspoon for the face and neck and one ounce for the body. In part, that’s because topicals, a category that includes creams, lotions, salves, balms and ointments, can vary so widely in formulation. These terms all refer to different ratios of oil, water and wax in a topical product—proportions that affect how spreadable and absorptive a skincare product might be. 

We suggest starting with a nickel sized portion of Entourus CBD salve, depending on the size of the affected area. For example, the lower back is a broader area than the back of the neck, and may require additional salve for effective application. Some parts of the body are also more naturally moisturized, for example. The skin on your face or around the adductor muscles of the leg, for instance, may absorb less product than the drier skin of your elbow or foot.

How to Apply CBD Muscle Cream

Often, the best CBD muscle cream isn’t actually a cream at all. Our CBD salves are semi-solid, with a high proportion of oils and waxes that are specifically designed to help the medicinal ingredients penetrate deeply into the skin. Cannabinoids and terpenes are both fat soluble, so a CBD topical with plenty of carrier oils improves efficacy as well as absorption. 

Carrier oils do exactly what they sound like—they carry bioactive ingredients like CBD where they need to go. The goal is to help the CBD travel as far beyond the outer layers of the epidermis as possible to connect with the endocannabinoid receptors in your skin, muscles and fascia.

Those oils and waxes also seal the outer layer of the skin, reducing the ability of the CBD to evaporate or sweat out of the skin once it’s absorbed. That occlusive quality can make CBD salves a better choice than traditional muscle creams or lotions for someone who has just finished sweating after a workout, or whose skin may be drier after showing with soap or body wash. 

To apply Entourus as a CBD muscle cream, take that nickel-size amount and massage into the area most affected by your workout, extending into the surrounding area as well. Continue to rub into the skin until the salve is completely absorbed—this takes about 60 to 90 seconds, on average, depending on your skin type and the size of the area. Oilier skin may take longer to absorb the CBD topical than drier skin.

How Frequently to Use CBD Muscle Cream

Every body metabolizes CBD, terpenes and any other bioactive ingredient a little differently. How often you apply CBD muscle cream depends on a variety of factors, from your skin type to the size of the area affected to the amount of stress your body is experiencing. Feeling extra aware of your quadriceps after leg day or a morning of cross country skiing is a different degree of discomfort than, say, tendonitis or a major sports injury like a torn rotator cuff. 

Several of the scientific studies into topical CBD utilized a twice-a-day dosage methodology—but it’s okay to apply CBD muscle cream more frequently, too. When you feel your last dose is losing effect, or if you realize that you need more than that initial nickel-size dosage, simply massage more into your skin.

How frequently you apply a CBD muscle cream also depends on the ratio of CBD to carrier oils in a given product. Entourus Synergy Salve, for example, has 40 mg of CBD per ml (or 2,000 mg per container), while the Soothe Salve has 20 mg of CBD per ml (or 1,000 mg per container). A higher concentration of CBD often translates into longer-lasting effects—so if you want to apply CBD less frequently, you might consider a higher CBD ratio.

Terpenes also play a role in how different doses and application frequency feel in your body. Full-spectrum, broad-spectrum and CBD isolate will all have slightly different effects depending on whether the CBD is taking effect in isolation or in combination with other terpenes and cannabinoids that can compound and enhance the effects of CBD. 

So how frequently should you apply CBD muscle cream for recovery? As often as you need to. Your endocannabinoid system will continue to respond to CBD as your body absorbs it.