How long does a sports injury take to heal?

“How long until I can get back to training?”

It’s one of the most common questions we get asked as Sports Therapists - but unfortunately there isn’t always a simple answer for that.

Every injury is completely different, and recovery time can depend on the type and severity of the injury, how quickly you start appropriate rehabilitation, your training history, previous injuries and even factors such as stress, nutrition and sleep. 

Understanding what you’ve injured is an important first step in understanding how long recovery might take, so by getting your injury assessed by a Sports Therapist is important. In this guide, we will look at the three most common types of sports injuries: muscle, ligament and tendon injuries, and explain typical healing times and how rehabilitation and can you return to your sport safely.

What determines how quickly a sports injury heals?

1. The Type of Injury 

Different tissues in the body heal at rates. For example a mild muscle strain may heal relatively quickly, whereas a ligament injury can take considerably longer. Bone fractures also require time for new bone to form and become strong enough to withstand normal activity.

Common sport injuries include:

• Muscle strains 

• Ligament sprains 

• Tendon injuries 

• Bruises and contusions 

• Stress fracture 

• Broken bones

• Dislocation 

1. The Severity of the Injury 

A mild injury generally heals faster than a moderate or severe one. A small muscle strain may only require a short period of modified activity while a complete muscle or ligament tear may require months of rehabilitation and in some cases surgery.

3. Your Age and General Health 

Your body's ability to repair damaged tissue can be affected by a number of factors, such as age, nutrition, sleep, general fitness and underlying health conditions. 

Younger people generally have good healing capacity, but this does not mean that an injury should be rushed. 

1. How You Manage the Injury 

What you do after an injury can influence how smoothly your recovery progresses. Depending on the injury, treatment may include relative rest, carefully controlled movement, strengthening exercises, massage or other recovery technique. 

Muscle injuries: Strains and Tears 

Muscle injuries are common in sports that involve sprinting, jumping, rapid changes of direction or explosive movements. A muscle injury occurs when muscle fibres are over stretched or damaged. They can range from a Grade 1 to a Grade 3, grade 3 being a severe tear which can require surgery. 

A general guide for muscle injuries (this is only a rough guide as no two injuries are the same):

• Grade 1 (mild strain): Often around 1-3 weeks

• Grade 2 (moderate tear): Commonly around 4-8 weeks, although some injuries can take longer

• Grade 3 (severe tear): Several months or potentially longer, particularly if surgery is involved.

The important thing with a muscle injury is to not just wait for the pain to disappear. Your rehabilitation programme will have several stages, focusing on controlling symptoms and maintaining comfortable movements. Throughout the stages, strength exercises will be implemented, starting off with isometric exercises. These are low impact exercises, allowing you to contract your muscle without moving your joints or changing the length of the muscle. Progressing onto isotonic exercises which are light weight or body weight dynamic exercises. Once comfortable, slowly increasing the weight and reps to rebuild muscle that can tolerate the demands of your sports again. 

Tendon injuries: Tendinopathies and Tears

Tendons connect muscles to bones and are designed to transfer force. Unlike muscles, tendons generally have a slower recovery process and can be more sensitive to changes in load. 

Tendon problems often develop gradually through repeated loading, rather than one single incident. A mild tendon problem may improve over several weeks, while persistent tendinopathy can take several months to settle. Complete tendon tears can require surgery and have a significantly longer rehabilitation period.

The worst thing to do when having a tendon injury, is to rest. You actually need an appropriate rehabilitation programme progressively loading and strengthening your tendon. The aim of tendon rehabilitation is to gradually increase the amount of load onto the tendon to see how much it can tolerate. 

Depending on the injury, your rehabilitation might include:

• Isometric exercises

• Slow, controlled strengthening exercises

• Heavy resistance exercises

• Plyometric exercises

• Running or jumping progression 

• Sports specific drills 

One of the biggest mistakes with tendon injuries is doing too much too soon - or avoiding exercise all together. Tendons need an appropriate amount of progressive loading to rebuild their capacity. 

Ligament injuries: Sprains and Tears 

Ligaments connect bone to bone and provide stability around a joint, ligaments act like a string rope or straps that support your joints. The main importance of ligaments is to make you and your joints feel stable and to guide specific movements, so it's important that exercises recreate that within your rehabilitation plan.  

ligament injury is often called a sprain and can range from a mild stretch to a complete tear. 

A general guide for ligament injuries:

• Grade 1(mild sprain): Often 1-3 weeks 

• Grade 2 (moderate sprain): 3-8 weeks

• Grade 3 (Severe or complete tear): Several months, with some injuries requiring surgery. 

With ligament rehabilitation, you don’t want to just rest. You should focus on restoring: 

1. Range of movement

2. Strength 

3. Balance and coordination 

4. Joint Stability 

5. Sports-specific movement 

6. Confidence in the injured joint 

By adding exercises to help restore joint stability of the ligaments, that will help to rebuild the supportive muscles around the joint to compensate for structural laxity and control abnormal movements. And by improving range of movements this will help to prevent long term stiffness by gradually re-establishing full extension and flexion. Adding exercises that focus on proprioception work will help to improve your balance and coordination as this retrains the nervous systems awareness of joint position. 

How important is a rehabilitation programme for my injury?

Essential. Well that's if you want to restore full function, rebuild strength and prevent future re-injury. 

Your rehabilitation will progress properly back to returning to your sport, without that you won't be able to or it will take a lot longer.

When can I return to sport?

The date of return all depends on how well you are progressing through your rehabilitation programme. Making sure that all movements have full range of motion, there is equal strength in comparison to your non injured leg and there is no pain or swelling within the injured area. 

At the end of your rehabilitation you should always complete a sport specific stage, these exercises will recreate specific movements within your sport putting similar demands on your body that would happen within a game or training. You should not rush this stage (or in fact any stage of your rehab), this is a very crucial stage, as if you are lying to yourself about how your body or injury is feeling, you are more than likely going to be putting it at risk which could injure it again which means you are back to the start.

Conclusion 

So, how long does a sports injury take to heal?

The answer depends on what you've injured, how severe the injury is and how you respond to rehabilitation. Rather than concentrating on a timeline, focus on your body and how it is responding to rehab and feeling.