How to Keep from Standing Up on the Golf Downswing

That feeling of pure, solid contact vanishes the moment your body straightens up through the downswing. One second you feel powerful at the top, and the next, you’re standing tall, delivering a weak, thin shot or a block out to the right. It’s a frustrating habit that robs you of power and consistency. This article gets right to the heart of this common problem, explaining exactly why you're standing up and giving you practical, easy-to-follow drills to stop it for good.

Why Am I Standing Up in My Golf Swing?

Standing up in the downswing, often called "early extension," is when your hips and pelvis move toward the golf ball instead of rotating out of the way. When this happens, your spine angle straightens up, forcing your arms and the club to get thrown out and away from your body. It's almost never the root problem, it’s a compensation for something else going wrong earlier in the swing.

To fix it, you need to understand what's causing that compensation. Here are the most common culprits:

• A Flawed Downswing Sequence: Many golfers start their downswing with their upper body - the shoulders and arms. When your arms swing down but your hips haven't rotated to create space, your body instinctively stands up and shoves the hips forward to avoid getting jammed. It’s a survival move to make room for the club.
• A Misunderstanding of Power: In an attempt to get the ball airborne, many amateurs try to "help" it up by lifting their torso through impact. It feels powerful, but it's the opposite of what great ball-strikers do. True power comes from rotating and using the ground, not from standing and lifting.
• Poor Setup Posture: If you start your swing too upright or without enough tilt from your hips, you don’t give yourself any room to maintain that posture through the swing. A limp, unstructured setup almost guarantees you’ll have to stand up to hit the ball.
• Lack of Mobility: Sometimes, stiff hips or limited thoracic (upper back) rotation can physically prevent you from making the correct turn. If your body can't rotate, it will find another way to move - usually 'early extending' towards the ball.

The good news is that for most golfers, this is a sequencing and habit issue, not a physical limitation. By reworking your setup and understanding the correct order of operations in the downswing, you can train your body to stay in posture and deliver the club with force and precision.

Building a Swing That Stays Tall (Before You Stand Up)

Preventing early extension begins long before you start your downswing. It starts at address. If your setup doesn't promote athletic rotation, your body will have no choice but to adjust later on. A solid, athletic setup is non-negotiable.

Finding Your Athletic Tilt

Think about a shortstop getting ready for the pitch or a basketball player defending the ballhandler. They are in a ready, athletic position - and so should you be.

1. Stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart, holding a club out in front of you.
2. The main حرکت needs to come from your hips, not your waist. Push your bottom backward as if you’re about to sit in a tall barstool behind you. Maintain a relatively straight Rücken as you do this.
3. Allow your upper body to tilt forward until your arms can hang down naturally and comfortably from your shoulders. Your arms should hang almost directly below your shoulders, not reaching out for the ball.
4. Flex your knees slightly. They shouldn't be locked stiff or overly bent like you're sitting in a chair. The bend is a consequence of tilting at your hips.

This position should feel powerful. You should feel balanced, with your weight evenly distributed in the middle of your feet. Many golfers who stand up in their swing often set up with their weight too far back on their heels or too far forward on their toes. A balanced, athletic setup gives you a stable base from which to rotate without losing your angles.

The Downswing Sequence That Kills Early Extension

Once you’re set up correctly, the key to staying down is to get the downswing moving in the right order. The problem isn’t "staying down" - it’s what you do to make yourself stand up.

Imagine your body from the ground up: feet, knees, hips, torso, arms, club. The downswing should start from the ground up, in that order. This is the kinematic sequence, and it’s the secret to effortless power and maintaining your posture.

The "Unwinding" Motion: Hips First, Always

As you complete your backswing, your first move down should not be with your hands or shoulders. The first move is a slight shift of pressure to your lead foot followed by the rotation of your lead hip.

Think of it like this: your lead hip (your left hip for a right-handed golfer) needs to rotate back and away from the golf ball and the target line. This action accomplishes two vital things:

1. It moves your lower body out of the way, creating a massive amount of space for your arms and club to swing down on the correct path.
2. It forces the club to "drop" onto the inside plane, preventing the steep, over-the-top move that often accompanies early extension.

Once the hips start to clear, the torso naturally follows, then the arms, and finally the club gets "slung" through the impact zone with incredible speed. When this sequence is correct, your body has to stay in its forward tilt to make solid contact. There’s simply no reason for it to stand up.

A great feeling to achieve this is to imagine your belt buckle pointing behind the ball at a 45-degree angle in the backswing and then pointing at the target (or even slightly left of it) at the finish. That visualization forces you to rotate your lower body correctly.

Drills to Cure Early Extension for Good

Understanding the concept is one thing, but feeling it is another. These drills are designed to retrain your muscle memory and give you the sensation of staying in your golf posture through impact.

Drill 1: The Chair Drill

This is the classic, time-tested drill for fixing early extension, and it works because it provides instant feedback.

1. Set up without a club, a few inches in front of a sturdy chair, a wall, or your golf bag. Your backside should be just brushing up against it.
2. Take a slow-motion backswing. As you rotate back, your right glute (for a right-hander) should press into the chair. This confirms you're turning correctly without swaying.
3. Now, here’s the important part. As you start your downswing transition, your left glute must rotate back to replace your right glute, staying in contact with the chair the entire time.
4. If you stand up, you'll immediately feel your body pull away from the object. The goal is to feel your hips and rear end working along the chair's edge as you rotate through to a finish position.

Perform 10-15 slow rehearsals of this motion daily. After a few reps, introduce a club and make half-swings, focusing only on that feeling of maintaining contact. Eventually, work your way up to full swings and hitting balls.

Drill 2: The Feel the Lower Body "Squat"

Another big issue for those who stand up is a lack of an athletisc "re-centering" move in transition. Instead of dropping down to use the ground for power, they push up immediately. This drill addresses that.

1. Take your normal setup with a mid-iron.
2. Make a regular backswing, stopping at the top.
3. From the top, the very first sensation you want to feel is a slight "squatting" or dropping motion. It's not a dramatic sit-down, but a feeling of increasing the flex in your lead knee and applying pressure into your lead foot straight down into the ground.
4. Once you feel that slight 'drop', immediately initiate the hip rotation you practiced in the Chair Drill. The hip turn feels so much more natural and powerful when it’s preceded by this subtle 're-centering' move.

Players like Rory McIlroy are famous for this powerful squat and turn. It uses the ground to generate rotational force and virtually eliminates any chance of standing up too early.

Drill 3: The "Tush-Line" Swing

This drill helps you take the feeling to the course.

1. Take your address position. Ask a friend to place a club shaft or an alignment stick on the ground, running directly behind your heels and parallel to your target line.
2. Your goal is simple: when you swing, your backside cannot cross over that line toward the ball.
3. At address, make a note of the spot just behind your rear end. During the swing, your hips should be rotating and moving back away from the ball, feeling closer to that imaginary line at impact than they were at address.

This helps you visualize the space you need to maintain behind you throughout the swing, a space that gets invaded when you early extend. It's a simple mental cue that makes a huge difference.

Final Thoughts

Kicking the habit of standing up in your downswing comes down to mastering two things: a solid, athletic setup and the correct lower-body-first sequence. By focusing on maintaining your posture at address and training your hips to rotate and clear out of the way first, you allow your body to stay down, stay in the shot, and deliver the club with a powerful, descending blow.

Solving a swing fault on your own can be a real puzzle, and it's easy to wonder if you're practicing the right thing. It's why we created our tool, sending an expert golf coach right into your pocket. With Caddie AI, you can ask for clarity on a drill or get instant, judgment-free advice on a tricky situation right on the course, anytime, day or night. We give you that on-demand expert opinion, taking the guesswork out of your improvement so you can focus on building a more solid, repeatable golf swing.