Skeletal muscle injury (SMI) is relatively common in clinical practice, and there are different understandings and methods of its pathogenesis and treatment strategies in traditional Chinese and Western medicine. The development of SMI animal models that can reflect the clinical characteristics of traditional Chinese and Western medicine is of great significance for in-depth research on its pathogenesis and exploration of effective treatment methods. This paper comprehensively evaluates the construction methods, characteristics and the coincidence degree with traditional Chinese and Western medicine syndromes of the existing animal models from the etiology and pathogenesis, diagnostic criteria and syndrome differentiation typing of SMI. The results show that the heavy object falling strike model has the highest coincidence degree with traditional Chinese and Western medicine syndromes, with a coincidence degree of 69.6% in Western medicine and 49.4% in traditional Chinese medicine; followed by the exercise-induced model, with a coincidence degree of 49.8% in Western medicine and 44.1% in traditional Chinese medicine; while the chemical stimulation and ischemia-reperfusion models have the lowest coincidence degree. Overall, the SMI animal models involved in this paper have a higher coincidence degree with Western medicine than with traditional Chinese medicine, and the existing models are difficult to accurately correspond with the syndrome differentiation typing of traditional Chinese medicine. Therefore, the construction of animal models that can accurately reflect the characteristics of traditional Chinese and Western medicine syndromes and traditional Chinese medicine syndromes is still an important direction for future research.