Everyone has ‘pulled a muscle’ at some point in their life. Maybe you’ve sprinted for the bus and felt a sharp tightness in your hamstring, or you turned too quickly after someone called your name and you felt a tweak in your neck. A pulled muscle is used as an umbrella term to describe an injury to a muscle that isn’t a full tear. Within this range, a pulled muscle may last for a few minutes, but can be more severe and last several months and require a period of rehab away from your sport or preferred activity.

How long do muscles take to recover?

Pulling a muscle can range from a simple annoyance, to quite a scary moment where you may be unsure of what your next step should be. There are varying opinions both from healthcare professionals and Dr. Google. Some people will tell you to completely rest, while someone with the same credentials may tell you to ‘push through the pain’.

It is dependent to note that the length of time it will take to recover from a pulled muscle depends on various factors, including;

• Severity of muscle injury

• Body part affected

• Presence of secondary injuries

• Age and physical conditioning of injured person

• What level of sport the injured person is trying to reach

If you are unsure of the severity of your muscle strain, it would be best to get assessed by a physio before you start any rehab exercises.

What is a pulled muscle?

A pulled muscle is essentially a soft tissue injury to any muscle group in the body. Common injury areas would be back muscles, calf muscles, quads, adductors and glute muscles. 

All muscle pulls with vary in presentation and symptoms and generally can be graded on their severity.

Symptoms of muscle pulls are listed below:

• pain on palpation of the injury site

• bruising or tenderness

• Difficultly doing movements that involve that muscle e.g. straightening and bending knee for quad injury

• tightness or muscle spasms in the area of pain

How do muscles recover?

A pulled back muscle recovery time may be different to a calf muscle strain recovery time. It all depends on the severity, size and area of injury, but all muscle groups will go through the same healing general healing pattern.

Muscle healing starts with an initial inflammatory response, usually lasting 2 or 3 days. Then it moves to a proliferation phase 24-48 hours after injury and can continue for several months, and then the final stage is remodelling phase, which starts soon after injury but can last for a year or more.

At a cellular level there are different things happening at these stages:

• Inflammatory phase = stage of heat, redness, swelling, and highest pain levels.

• Proliferation = where you begin activating muscles, regenerating tissue, and slowly introducing your usual level of exercise/sport.

• Remodelling = maturation of the regenerated myofibres, and where you begin full return to sport, heavy weights, sprinting, and tackling.

Notice that each of these phases overlap. In other words, the body is undergoing more than one phase at any given time until around six months after your injury.

What is the best way to recover from a muscle strain?

During the first 3 days after a muscle strain, there are a few things you can do to reduce pain and speed up the healing process;

• Protect the area if needed.

• Optimally load the area - this usually means gentle activation and range of motion exercises.

• Ice the area if swollen initially - this is more as pain relief rather than the widely reported ‘anti-inflammatory’ properties of ice.

• Compress the area if required in first few days - this sometimes takes the form of a compression bandage or sock.

• Elevate the area if significantly swollen - elevation usually needs to be above chest level to have true drainage effects.

The most important thing about muscle pull recovery is getting started with rehab ASAP. If you leave the injury for a while, the tissue will heal but will be much weaker than before and you will be at a higher risk of a re-injury. You are much better getting it sorted now to avoid more intervention in the future.

Your rehab process will start with reducing any remaining pain using hands on techniques and self management techniques, then it will move to building foundational strength and then will progress onto building functional strength based on your own individual needs and goals.

If you have any questions on whether physio is the best option for you, or you have any questions about MVMNT in general, feel free to contact via email.

- Jay Towolawi, Specialist Sports Physiotherapist and MVMNT Founder.