What to Do Before and After a Chiropractic Adjustment — A Sioux Falls Chiropractor Explains
- Dr. Lucas Marchand
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
By Dr. Lucas Marchand, DC — MyChiro Mobile Chiropractic, Sioux Falls, SD
The question comes up at the end of almost every first visit, usually while the patient is putting their shoes back on: "Is there anything I should do after this?"
It's a good question and it deserves a specific answer rather than a generic list of wellness tips. What you do in the hours before and after a chiropractic adjustment affects how well the treatment holds — not marginally, but meaningfully. The adjustment addresses the restricted joint. What surrounds that intervention determines how long the improvement lasts before the tissue pulls things back toward where they were.
Here's what actually helps, and why.
Before Your Adjustment — Prepare the Tissue
The most common pre-visit mistake is arriving cold — meaning the surrounding musculature is still in whatever state it was in from sitting at a desk or driving across Sioux Falls to the appointment. Adjusting a joint surrounded by chronically guarded, ischemic tissue is less effective than adjusting one that has been prepared.
Heat — ten to fifteen minutes before.
Applied heat to the area that will be treated increases local circulation and reduces the passive tension in the surrounding musculature. The adjustment can then affect the joint with less resistance from the tissue around it. A heating pad, a warm shower, or a warm cloth applied to the lower back or neck for ten to fifteen minutes before the visit is the simplest and most consistently useful pre-visit intervention.
This is particularly relevant for MyChiro's mobile visits — because the clinic comes to you, you have access to your own home or office before the appointment starts. Use that. A patient who has been sitting with a heating pad on their lower back for fifteen minutes before the van arrives is in a meaningfully better mechanical state than one who just got up from their desk.
Gentle movement — not stretching.
Light walking for five to ten minutes before the visit is more useful than static stretching. Walking activates the glute-hamstring-lumbar chain in a coordinated, low-load pattern that warms the tissue and increases joint fluid circulation without placing significant demand on restricted structures. Static stretching before an adjustment — particularly aggressive stretching — can actually increase protective guarding in the tissue you're trying to release.
Hydration.
Intervertebral discs are approximately 80 percent water. Their capacity to absorb and distribute load depends on adequate hydration. This isn't a dramatic intervention but it's real and costs nothing — arriving well-hydrated rather than in a coffee-only morning state is the correct baseline for any musculoskeletal treatment.
After Your Adjustment — Help It Hold
The adjustment restores motion to a restricted joint. The surrounding tissue — muscle, fascia, ligament — has adapted to the restricted state over days, weeks, or months. It doesn't immediately reorganize to support the restored motion. What you do in the hours after the adjustment either supports that reorganization or undermines it.
Movement — gentle and consistent.
The worst thing for an adjustment is going from the treatment table directly to sitting at a desk for four hours. Sustained static load after an adjustment compresses the joints that were just mobilized and allows the surrounding tissue to tighten back toward the state it was in before the visit.
Walking, gentle activity, and regular position changes in the hours after the adjustment are more effective than rest for maintaining what was gained. Light activity tells the nervous system the area is safe to move — which reinforces the neurological change the adjustment initiated. Rest tells it nothing.
Ice — in the first twenty-four hours if soreness develops.
Soreness after an adjustment is normal, particularly after a first visit or after treatment of an area that has been restricted for a significant period. The soreness is not the adjustment failing — it's the tissue responding to new movement patterns after a period of restriction. It typically resolves within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
If soreness develops, ice applied for ten to fifteen minutes at a time helps manage it. The mechanism is simple: ice reduces local circulation and temporarily numbs the area, which reduces the pain signal without interfering with the healing response.
Do not apply heat to a sore post-adjustment area in the first twenty-four hours. Heat increases circulation to an area that already has an elevated inflammatory response — it amplifies the soreness rather than reducing it. The sequence is: heat before, ice after if sore.
Avoid heavy load in the first few hours.
Heavy lifting, high-intensity exercise, or any activity that places significant compressive load on the treated area is best avoided for the first two to four hours after an adjustment. The joint that was just mobilized is in a transitional state — the surrounding tissue is reorganizing, the nervous system is updating its map of the area, and the structural changes need time to settle before being loaded heavily.
Light activity is encouraged. Heavy load is not.
What to Expect Over Multiple Visits
A single adjustment produces a change. Multiple adjustments, with appropriate spacing and consistent post-visit care, produce lasting structural improvement.
The first visit is often the most uncomfortable and produces the most dramatic immediate relief — the guarding releases, the restricted joint moves, the pain signal reduces. The second and third visits consolidate that change. The tissue that adapted to restriction over months doesn't fully reorganize after one session — each subsequent visit addresses the residual restriction and allows the surrounding musculature to adapt progressively.
The treatment sequence at MyChiro — percussion therapy, PIR stretching, adjustment — is designed to address the tissue at each stage rather than jumping directly to manipulation. Each stage prepares the next. Arriving prepared for that sequence, and supporting it afterward with the recommendations above, is what produces the outcomes patients attribute to the adjustment alone.
A Note on Home Care Between Visits
The question patients most often forget to ask is what to do between visits — not just immediately before and after, but in the days in between.
The short answer: move consistently, avoid the sustained static positions that produced the restriction in the first place, and apply heat to chronically tense areas for ten to fifteen minutes daily rather than waiting for the next appointment to address them.
For back pain specifically, a daily set of McKenzie press-ups or cat-cow movements maintains the lumbar range of motion restored by the adjustment. For neck pain, the chin tuck exercise performed every hour counteracts the forward head position that progressively restricted the cervical spine in the first place.
What patients do between visits determines whether the adjustment holds or needs to be repeated from the same starting point. The visit is the intervention. The between-visit behavior is the environment that determines whether the intervention sticks.
Getting Care in Sioux Falls
MyChiro serves Sioux Falls, Brandon, Tea, Harrisburg, Renner, Canton, and the surrounding area. The clinic comes to you — which means the pre-visit preparation described above happens in your own space, with your own heating pad, before the van arrives. Same-day appointments are usually available.
Book your visit here. Or call or text (605) 201-4862.
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