That all-too-familiar feeling of your head and chest lifting through impact is a massive power leak, turning what should be a solidly struck shot into a thin, weak one. Often called standing up or early extension, this common swing fault costs golfers countless strokes and creates massive frustration. This article will break down exactly why you stand up in the swing and provide a clear, step-by-step guide with actionable drills to help you stay in posture, compress the ball, and unlock your most powerful, consistent swing.
Standing up in your golf swing rarely happens for just one reason, it's usually a reaction to something else going wrong earlier in the motion. To fix it for good, we first need to understand the underlying causes. For most golfers, it comes down to one of these three issues.
So many golfers feel they need to help the ball get into the air. They intuitively try to scoop or lift the ball at impact. To do this, they raise their chest and torso, which throws off the entire swing. Remember the philosophy of a good golf swing: your job isn't to lift the ball. The loft on the club is designed to do that for you. Your job is to deliver that club to the back of the ball on a slightly descending angle, hitting the ball first and then the turf (with an iron). This creates compression. When you try to "assist" the loft, you almost always end up standing up and hitting it thin.
Your golf swing is a powerful athletic motion. If you lose your balance, your body’s an-instinctive reaction is to do whatever is necessary to regain it. A common problem is swaying off the ball in the backswing - your hips and upper body slide away from the target instead of rotating. From this off-balance position at the top, it’s practically impossible to unwind properly. Your brain senses instability and says, “Stand up! You’re about to fall over!” This muscular firing pulls your torso upward and away from the ball, leading to a weak strike.
This is the most common and technical cause of standing up. Early extension happens when your hips and pelvis thrust toward the golf ball during the downswing, instead of rotating out of the way. When your lower body moves closer to the ball, your posture is forced to straighten up. If it didn’t, the club would crash into the ground well behind the ball.
But why does this happen? Often, it’s a downstream effect of an "over-the-top" swing path. When your initial downswing move comes from the arms and shoulders throwing the club outside the proper path, your body instinctively knows it’s on a crash course with the ball. The hip thrust is a last-ditch effort to create space so the club can swing through. The raising up of the body is the unfortunate side effect of that life-saving move.
You cannot stay in your posture if you never established good posture to begin with. The setup is not just a static position, it’s a dynamic, athletic posture that primes your body for rotation. This is where you create the space to swing freely without needing to stand up.
A good setup is a bit like setting a strong C in basketball –athletic and ready for action. And for a lot of players, it feels genuinely weird at first because we don't stand like this in daily life.
Forget “bending your knees.” I want you to start by focusing on a proper hip hinge. Stand up straight with a club across your shoulders. Now, push your butt straight back as if you’re trying to touch a wall behind you. Your chest will naturally tilt forward toward the ground, but your spine will remain relatively straight. This is the correct bend from the hips. This is the move that creates room for your arms to swing and your body to rotate under your stable torso.
From that hinged position, simply let your arms hang relaxed and naturally from your shoulders. Where they hang is where you should grip the club. If you have to reach for the ball, you haven’t hinged enough. If your hands feel jammed into your body, you’ve hinged too much. Stand far enough from the ball that your arms can hang freely. This eliminates a huge variable that might cause problems later.
Your feet should be about shoulder-width apart for a mid-iron. Feel your weight evenly distributed between your left and right foot, but more specifically, feel the pressure centered in the balls of your feet. You should feel stable but also agile - as if you could jump sideways in either direction. If your weight is on your heels, you're more likely to thrust forwards onto your toes for balance. If it's on your toes, you're likely to fall back on your heels.
Understanding the theory is great, but ingraining the proper feel requires practice. These drills are designed to give you clear feedback so you can finally feel what it’s like to maintain your posture through the golf swing.
This is a timeless classic for a reason. Find a wall and get into your golf setup with the top of your head resting gently against it.
This directly combats early extension. You can use your golf bag, a chair, or an alignment stick for this drill.
A great feel to have is keeping your chest pointing at the golf ball for as long as possible after impact. Many amateurs lift their chest to face the target immediately after contact.
The transition from backswing to downswing is where most swings break down and lifting begins. The proper sequence feels less like a violent heave and more like a fluid unwinding from the ground up.
Picture yourself in a cylinder, as we discussed in the foundation of the golf swing. In your backswing, you rotate inside this cylinder. The downswing is a re-centering and unwinding motion, not an upward leap.
The first move down should not be from your arms or shoulders. Instead, it’s a gentle but deliberate pressuring of your lead foot into the ground. Feel as if you’re squashing a bug under the ball of your front foot. This subtle move shifts your weight slightly forward and initiates the turning of your hips *before* your upper body begins to unwind. This ground-up sequence is the secret to a powerful downswing. It buys your lower body time to rotate and clear out of the way, creating a massive runway for your arms and the club to swing through without any need for your body to stand up to make space.
When you get this sequence right, you stop fighting for room and start delivering the club with effortless power, letting the club’s design do the work of sending the ball soaring.
Staying down in your golf swing solves a host of problems, from thin shots and slices to a massive loss of power. The solution lies in a proper athletic setup, drills that teach you the feel of rotation, and sequencing your downswing from the ground up so your body can turn powerfully instead of standing up defensively.
While these drills are highly effective, sometimes you need instant, personalized feedback on what’s actually happening in your posture and sequence. This is why we created Caddie AI. By analyzing a recording of your swing, it can pinpoint the exact moment your posture changes or if your hips are thrusting toward the ball. This removes the guesswork from your practice, so you can build on a solid foundation and train the most efficient, powerful, and repeatable moves for your game.
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