Part of Ankle sprain

Sprained ankle recovery time: what the evidence actually shows

Sprained ankle recovery time comes in two halves, and most pages only describe the first one. The early half of sprained ankle recovery time is fast: a systematic review of 31 studies found that reported pain fell rapidly inside the first 2 weeks (van Rijn and colleagues, 2008). The second half is a long tail that almost nothing written for patients mentions. The US physical therapy guideline reports that 5 to 33 percent of people still have pain a year or more later, and 5 to 25 percent at three years, with continued reports of instability in 0 to 33 percent of patients in the better quality studies (Martin and colleagues, 2021). The same guideline puts getting back to an activity at anywhere from 1 day to a little more than 3 weeks depending on what the activity asks, desk work at 2 to 6 weeks, and physical work or sport at 6 to 8 weeks. The NHS says most sprains feel better after 2 weeks, advises avoiding strenuous exercise such as running for up to 8 weeks, and says a severe sprain can take months. If your ankle was broken, if you have had surgery on it, or if the injury was to the ligament joining the two shin bones just above the joint, none of these numbers is your timeline.

Warning signs, and when to get help

How long does a sprained ankle take to heal?

The first two weeks do most of the visible work. A systematic review of 31 studies of the clinical course, 24 of them rated high quality, found a rapid fall in reported pain inside the first 2 weeks (van Rijn and colleagues, 2008). That matches what the NHS tells people: most sprains and strains feel better after 2 weeks, while a severe one can take months to get back to normal.

OrthoInfo, the patient site of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, gives a figure that is often read as a healing time and is not one. Its three-phase program, it says, runs for as little as 2 weeks where the sprain is minor, and up to 6 to 12 weeks where the injury is more severe. That is the length of a rehabilitation program, not a date the ligament becomes normal, and the difference matters when you are deciding whether to be worried at week five.

Then there are the tables of weeks by grade that circulate online. Those tables do not come from the documents behind this page. Nothing read for it supports a grade-banded timeline, and the US physical therapy guideline states that the evidence on the role of injury severity in the clinical course is conflicting (Martin and colleagues, 2021). What the grades do mean is on grades of ankle sprain.

So the useful version of this answer is a shape rather than a number. Fast early improvement, a slower middle where you can do most things and the ankle still objects to some of them, and for a minority a tail that lasts a great deal longer. The staged program that fills those weeks is the ankle sprain program.

The long tail that nobody mentions

This is the part a patient is least often told and most often lives.

The US physical therapy guideline sets it out in plain figures. Between 5 and 33 percent of people still have pain a year or more after a lateral ankle sprain, and 5 to 25 percent still have it after three years. In the high quality studies, continued reports of instability ran from 0 to 33 percent over follow-up periods of three years or less (Martin and colleagues, 2021). The systematic review those figures trace back to adds that the risk of spraining it again ranged from 3 to 34 percent across its 31 studies, with repeat sprains recorded anywhere from 2 weeks to 96 months after the first one (van Rijn and colleagues, 2008).

Those are wide ranges because the studies behind them measured different people in different ways. Wide is still useful. It tells you that a sore ankle at six months is a recognized outcome, not a sign you have done something wrong, and it tells you that being in the lucky majority is not guaranteed by anything you can read off a chart.

What the long tail is not is a reason to stop asking. The NHS puts an injury that is not feeling any better after you have treated it yourself, or one that feels very stiff or is difficult to move, in its urgent advice box, next to pain or swelling that is getting worse. So an ankle nobody has looked at, that is not improving, gets looked at rather than waited out on the strength of these percentages.

The tail has a consequence, and it is the reason any of this matters. The International Ankle Consortium evidence review describes recurrence rates after a first sprain as high, with a large proportion of people going on to develop lasting instability, which in turn is associated with less physical activity, worse quality of life and rising rates of ankle arthritis later (Gribble and colleagues, 2016). That is the reason the rehabilitation does not finish when the pain does.

How long for a grade 2 ankle sprain?

This is the most searched version of the question, and no document read for this page gives a number for it.

The reading list was the US physical therapy guideline in full, the systematic review of the clinical course, the NHS sprains and strains page, the OrthoInfo sprained ankle page and the United States athletic training position statement. Not one of them publishes a recovery time banded by grade. The guideline goes further and reports the evidence on severity and the clinical course as conflicting, alongside its finding that 50 to 85 percent of people report full recovery at about three years independent of how severe the sprain was (Martin and colleagues, 2021).

The nearest thing to a severity-linked figure is the OrthoInfo program length, 2 weeks for a minor sprain and up to 6 to 12 weeks for a more severe one. As a program length it is reasonable. As a promise about your ligament it is not, and it will not tell you which end of that range you are at.

What the guideline does offer instead is a list of things that bear on how an ankle is likely to go, and it is a more useful list than the grade: among them whether you have sprained the ankle before, whether you can put weight on it and whether that hurts, how far the ankle bends upward, and how your balance is on that leg (Martin and colleagues, 2021). Three of those four are things a physio can change. A grade is not.

When can you get back to work and sport?

Here the guideline is specific, and the figures are more interesting than a single healing time because they separate two different questions.

For getting back to an activity, it puts the range at 1 day to a little more than 3 weeks, depending on what the desired activity or sport demands. It adds that full recovery with no symptoms or limitations may take months or years and cannot be expected in every patient. For work, it gives 2 to 6 weeks for sedentary work and 6 to 8 weeks for physical work or sport (Martin and colleagues, 2021).

Put the 1 day to 3 weeks figure next to the NHS advice to avoid strenuous exercise such as running for up to 8 weeks and you have the whole problem of this topic in one line. Both are true. They describe different things: one is what people did, the other is what a health service advises for safety.

The guideline also reports what a group of high school athletes actually did after a first-time sprain: about a 75 percent chance of being back in sport within 3 days and 95 percent within 10 days, with no difference between new and repeat sprains (Martin and colleagues, 2021). Read that as a description of teenagers with an athletic trainer in the building, not as a plan. A true sentence can still be the wrong guide for your ankle. The decision belongs to criteria, not to the calendar, and what is and is not published about those criteria is on ankle sprain return to sport.

If your job puts you on ladders, scaffolding or uneven ground, raise it early with whoever manages you. The guideline treats a planned return to work, a brace early on and training that matches the job as part of the treatment rather than an afterthought (Martin and colleagues, 2021).

Why is mine taking longer than everyone else's?

Usually because of something specific, not something mysterious. Most of the candidates are checkable.

The common ones are a limp that has outlived the pain, an ankle that no longer bends far enough upward for stairs or a squat, a calf that lost strength during the quiet fortnight and never got it back, and balance on that leg that nobody has retrained. The first week has two opposite mistakes behind many of them: resting it well past the first few days, or reading a drop in swelling as a green light. Both are covered on the ankle sprain program, and the weight bearing question of that first week is on can you walk on a sprained ankle.

Two things are not the ordinary slow course at all. An ankle that keeps giving way weeks or months later is not a slow recovery, it is chronic ankle instability, and it is a reason to book an assessment, not to wait. An ankle whose pain was never really the outer ligament may be a different injury altogether, including the one above the joint described on high ankle sprain or a break covered by ankle fracture rehabilitation. The warning list at the foot of this page gives the signs that need acting on today rather than at your next appointment.

Does a sprained ankle ever fully heal?

Many people do, and the two published figures for how many do not agree with each other. Both are given here rather than averaged, because averaging two numbers is how a figure nobody published gets into circulation.

The US physical therapy guideline states that 50 to 85 percent of people report full recovery at approximately three years after the injury, independent of sprain severity (Martin and colleagues, 2021). The systematic review that figure traces back to states that 36 to 85 percent reported full recovery within a period of three years (van Rijn and colleagues, 2008). The pain percentages in the two documents match exactly; the full recovery ranges do not, and the lower end differs by 14 percentage points. We do not know which is right, so the page gives you both with the document each one came from.

Either way the direction is the same, and the window is longer than most people are told. Three years is the period those studies followed, and somewhere between a third and the large majority of people describe themselves as recovered inside it, which is as precise as the evidence allows.

The practical reading is this. Judge your own ankle by what it does rather than by how long it has been: whether you can stand on it with your eyes shut as long as on the other leg, whether it swells after what you ask of it, whether it has rolled again. Those are the things the rehabilitation moves, and the measurement side of it is on ankle proprioception exercises. Lowering the odds of the next one is a separate job with better evidence behind it, and it is on how to prevent ankle sprains.

Related exercise programs

Warning signs

Get emergency help now

Emergency: the ankle or foot looks deformed or out of place, you heard a crack when you were injured, or the foot is numb, tingling, cold, pale or blue. Go to an emergency department straight away, and do not drive yourself.

Get help today

Same day: you could not take 4 steps right after the injury and still cannot, or the back edge or tip of either ankle bone is tender to press. Keep your weight off that foot as much as you can, leave the exercises out, and get it checked for a fracture the same day. These are part of the Ottawa ankle rules, explained on the ankle sprain page.
Same day: the pain is in the middle of your foot, and the bony bump halfway along the outer edge of the foot or the bony bump on the inner side of the midfoot is tender to press. Keep your weight off that foot as much as you can, leave the exercises out, and get it checked for a fracture the same day, even if you can still walk on it.
Same day: you felt a pop or snap at the back of your heel or lower calf, or it felt as if someone kicked you there, even if you can still walk and push off. Stop, take the weight off that leg carefully, and go to an urgent care center or emergency department the same day, as this can be a torn Achilles tendon rather than a sprain.
Same day: the pain is severe and getting worse, or the swelling or bruising is very large. Get medical advice the same day.
Same day: the ankle or foot is hot, red and swollen, or you have a fever or feel unwell. Get medical help the same day, and go to an emergency department if you feel very unwell. If you have a very high or very low temperature, shivering you cannot control, you are breathing very fast or finding it hard to breathe, you are confused or your speech is slurred, your skin, lips or tongue look blue, gray, pale or blotchy (on brown or black skin this can be easier to see on the palms of the hands or soles of the feet), or you have a rash that does not fade when you press it, call emergency services, as this can be sepsis.
Same day: a calf or thigh that is newly swollen or getting more swollen, warm, tender, red or darker than usual, has swollen veins that are sore to touch, or has a throbbing or cramping pain that does not fit your injury or condition, or that feels different from normal muscle soreness after exercise. This can be a sign of a blood clot (deep vein thrombosis), especially after surgery, an injury, time in a cast or boot, a long trip or a spell of being much less mobile than usual. Get medical advice the same day. If you are also short of breath or have chest pain, call emergency services.

Book an appointment

Within a week or two: the ankle keeps giving way or rolling over, even on flat ground, weeks or months after the sprain. This is not an emergency, but book an assessment with a physio or doctor in the next week or two.

Common questions

When will the swelling go down?

No published date exists for it, which matters if you have started measuring your ankle against one. The US physical therapy guideline treats swelling as something to record, not to predict: it asks clinicians to document ankle swelling, movement, joint play and single leg balance at the start of care and at least twice more during it, so the trend is what gets watched (Martin and colleagues, 2021). You can use it the same way at home. A little puffiness at the end of a busy day is ordinary for a while. An ankle that is clearly more swollen the next morning after a session has been asked for too much, which is a reason to take the next session back a notch rather than to stop.

How long until I can run again?

The NHS advises avoiding strenuous exercise such as running for up to 8 weeks after a sprain, which is the clearest national figure available, and it describes a sensible outer edge rather than a date to aim at. In practice the decision is made on what the ankle can do rather than the calendar, because nobody has published tested criteria for going back to sport after this injury. What is and is not established is set out on ankle sprain return to sport, and the running specifics are on return to running protocols.

Why is my ankle still stiff and achy months later?

Because that is more common than the two week figure suggests, not because something has gone wrong. The US physical therapy guideline reports pain persisting a year or more in 5 to 33 percent of people and still present at three years in 5 to 25 percent (Martin and colleagues, 2021). A long tail is not the same as nothing to do, though. An ankle that is still stiff, weak or unreliable months on usually has specific things missing, most often upward ankle bend, calf strength and balance on that leg, and those respond to work: the balance half is on ankle proprioception exercises. If it keeps giving way rather than just aching, see chronic ankle instability and get it assessed.

Does it matter that mine was a bad sprain?

Less for the timeline than you would think. The US physical therapy guideline says the evidence on the role of injury severity in the course of a sprain is conflicting, and when it lists what to take into account in judging how an ankle will do, the grade is not on the list (Martin and colleagues, 2021). Severity does change early protection, since a stiffer support or a cast is allowed for up to 10 days in more severe injuries. What the grades do and do not mean is on grades of ankle sprain.

References

Martin RL, Davenport TE, Fraser JJ, et al. Ankle Stability and Movement Coordination Impairments: Lateral Ankle Ligament Sprains Revision 2021. Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy. 2021;51(4):CPG1-CPG80. https://doi.org/10.2519/jospt.2021.0302
van Rijn RM, van Os AG, Bernsen RM, Luijsterburg PA, Koes BW, Bierma-Zeinstra SM. What is the clinical course of acute ankle sprains? A systematic literature review. The American Journal of Medicine. 2008;121(4):324-331.e6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2007.11.018
Gribble PA, Bleakley CM, Caulfield BM, et al. Evidence review for the 2016 International Ankle Consortium consensus statement on the prevalence, impact and long-term consequences of lateral ankle sprains. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2016;50(24):1496-1505. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2016-096189
Kaminski TW, Hertel J, Amendola N, et al. National Athletic Trainers' Association position statement: conservative management and prevention of ankle sprains in athletes. Journal of Athletic Training. 2013;48(4):528-545. https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-48.4.02
NHS. Sprains and strains. Page last reviewed 23 April 2024. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/sprains-and-strains/
American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Sprained Ankle. OrthoInfo. https://www.orthoinfo.org/bodypart/foot-ankle/sprained-ankle/

Written and checked by the PocketPhysio editorial team. Last updated 2026-11-06.

This page is general education, not a diagnosis or a personal treatment plan. See a physiotherapist or doctor for advice about your own situation.