Like many of you, we’re tough on our bodies. Many times we end the day with a few more aches, pains, scrapes, and bruises than we began with. But it comes with the territory. That’s why we were sure to make a stop at the TUFMED tent while we were out at Interbike last fall. An easy-to-use product that can help to speed our body’s natural healing process—that sounded pretty good to us.

TUFMED set us up with a full sampling of their products, including TUFHANDS, TUFWOUND, TUFBRUISE, TUFEYES, TUFRELIEF, and TUFSOAP. But before we share our experiences with the product, it’s time for a bit of background. TUFMED was founded in 2011 by a member of the U.S. Martial Arts Team with the goal of helping athletes of all kinds care for their injuries using the best (and safest) natural health care products on the market. In fact, the companies overarching message is “Keep it Natural,” and TUFMED products have been used by athletes in almost every sport.

One of the things we loved best about TUFMED’s message was also the fact that they do not contain ingredients that may harm an athlete or result in disqualification in competition. In other words, you won’t find any banned substances on the ingredient list. When they say “all natural,” they mean it. Some of the ingredients you’ll find include safflower oil, coconut oil, almond oil, vitamin E, organic aloe, and amino acids.

So far, we’ve had the most experience with TUFHANDS, TUFBRUISE, and TUFRELIEF. And if we were to pick a favorite, we’d have to say TUFHANDS is the winner there. Here’s a bit more about each.

Since we mentioned it was the AG Team favorite, let’s start with TUFHANDS. It’s a natural hand repair cream designed to heal and repair everything from rips, blisters, tears, scrapes, and roughness—just about everything. We’ve been using TUFHANDS for about a month now, and our biggest complaint is that it doesn’t come in a larger tube. We put our hands through a lot. We frequently come home with blisters, rough spots, scrapes, and tears in our skin—not to mention a lot of overall dryness due to frequent hand washing that comes with bike maintenance. But once we started using TUFHANDS just twice a day, we noticed a big difference. Those scrapes and rough spots were healing quicker. And our hands just felt better. We even started using TUFHANDS on other areas of our bodies that saw a lot of abuse—like our feet, for example. By the way, TUFMED recommends applying TUFHANDS three times per day, but we found twice daily worked well for us. You can get your own tube from Amazon.com for $14.99.

TUFRELIEF is a muscle and joint rub for those areas that are suffering from swelling and pain due to overuse or injury. We frequently have tightness and swelling in our calves, feet, and knees, so we were really curious to try this out. We’ve been using TUFRELIEF on those areas for about a month now, and we feel like it is making a difference—especially when we apply it at night before bed. We wake up feeling just a bit less stiff or achy than compared with those nights when we didn’t apply TUFRELIEF. Similar to the TUFHANDS, it’s recommended that you apply TUFRELIEF three times daily. We were using it twice a day – once in the morning after our post-workout shower and once at night right before bed. We found this to work well for us. Tracy, our multisport editor, started making it a part of her nighttime recovery routine. She’d apply TUFRELIEF to her calves and knees following a session with the foam roller. You can purchase TUFRELIEF from Amazon.com for $17.99.

TUFBRUISE is a cream intended to help with the pain and swelling associated with injuries that result in bruising of the skin. We’ve acquired our fair share of bruises, so we were very interested to see how this cream worked for us. Needless to say, we weren’t disappointed. TUFBRUISE definitely made a difference when we applied to a bruise—even 24 hours later. Bruises seemed to fade faster and the cream also seemed to help cut down on the pain that went along with it. TUFBRUISE is available for purchase from Amazon.com for $15.99.

When you consider that our only major complaint was that we couldn’t get a product in a larger size, that gives you an idea of just how much we liked it. We’d highly recommend keeping a few tubes of TUFMED on hand for those times when your body is run down, scraped up, and in need of some serious relief.