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How Long is the Average Recovery for Muscle Ligament or Tendon Damage?

When you damage one of your soft tissues related to your muscles—a ligament or tendon—life can instantly become more challenging. Everyday activities that were once rather easy to do take much more effort, and that’s not to mention the amount of pain that injuring one of these particular areas can cause.

Therefore, if you find yourself with damage to one of your ligaments or tendons, it may make you wonder how long it will likely take you to recover. Here are two of the most common injuries related to soft tissues, as well as the average recovery time for each one:

A Strain – Damage the area where your tendons and muscle connect, causing a strain, and the amount of time it takes you to heal depends on how bad the tear is. Dr. Sherwin Ho, Associate Professor of Surgery at The University of Chicago Medical Center reports via ABC News that a strain can take up to six months to heal, but the strains that most often lead to medical treatment usually only take three to six weeks.

A Sprain – A sprain involves damage where your muscles connect to your ligaments, the most common of which is an ankle sprain. The NHS indicates that most sprains are healed within a matter of weeks. However, it may take longer if the sprain is more severe, requiring months to fully heal.

Another factor to consider is what area of your body you do damage to. Take knee injuries, for instance. Injure your ACL to the point where it requires surgery, and you can expect a solid six months of healing time, according to Patient. This amount increases to 9-12 months if your PCL makes surgery necessary. Finally, a tear in your MCL is the least time-intensive, usually only needing three months of healing.

Regardless of what type of injury you sustain, you want to give it adequate time to heal to obtain the best results. To try to force it may just do more damage than good.