How to Not Get Stuck in a Golf Swing

There's a dreadful feeling in the downswing when everything jams up. Your arms feel trapped behind you, your body is spinning out of control, and you know, deep down, that a good shot is completely off the table. This is the dreaded stuck position, a swing-killer that leads to frustrating pushes, nasty hooks, and a total loss of power. This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, not just what it means to be stuck, but how to re-sequence your swing to avoid it for good.

What Does "Getting Stuck" Even Mean?

Let's get on the same page. Getting stuck isn't about strength or a secret move you're missing. It’s simply a timing and space issue. In plain English, getting stuck means your arms and the golf club have fallen behind the rotation of your body during the downswing.

Imagine your torso is a rotating door. In a good swing, your arms swing through the opening of the door. When you get stuck, it's like your arms are lagging so far behind that they get slammed by the rotating door itself. They're trapped.

From this trapped position, you have two bad options:

• Your hands desperately flip the clubhead at the ball to try and catch up, often leading to a hard hook or a thin shot.
• You do nothing to save it, and the club swings way out to the right (for a right-handed golfer), resulting in a weak block or push-slice.

Either way, it feels terrible and produces inconsistent results. The good news is that this isn't a life sentence. It’s a sequence problem, and all sequence problems can be fixed.

The Real Reason You Get Stuck: An Out-of-Sync Engine

Many golfers mistakenly believe that "getting stuck" is an arm problem. They try to fix it by pulling their arms down faster or trying to manipulate the club into a different position. This rarely works, because the arms are not the root of the problem.

Your body is the engine of the golf swing. Your torso and hips produce the real power. Your arms and the club are just along for that powerful ride. The issue arises when the engine (your body) and the transmission (your arms) get out of sync. More specifically, your lower body and torso begin to spin open far too early and too fast in the downswing, leaving your arms and club with nowhere to go but behind you.

So, forget about crazy arm manipulations. The solution lies in fixing the order of operations in your swing to create the time and space for your arms to work in harmony with your body’s rotation.

Creating a Stuck-Proof Swing: A Better Sequence

We’re going to build a swing that gives you all the room you need. This isn't about a total overhaul, but about focusing on three key stages where things typically go wrong.

1. Fix Your Setup to Create Space

Your ability to not get stuck begins before you even start swinging. Your setup dictates the amount of space you have for your arms to swing freely through impact. If you stand too tall and upright, with your arms tight against your body, you're already cramping the system.

As we often tell our students, the golf setup feels weird at first because it’s unlike standing in any other part of life. But it's functionally perfect. Here’s how to do it:

1. Bend from your hips: Don’t just squat down. Hinge your upper body forward from your hip joints. A good feeling is to slightly push your bottom backwards as your chest tilts over the ball.
2. Let your arms hang naturally: From this hinged position, let your arms hang straight down from your shoulders. They shouldn’t be reaching way out, nor should they be pinned to your sides. They should be relaxed and hang right underneath your shoulders. This action naturally creates a critical pocket of space between your hands and your legs.
3. Maintain posture, stay athletic: Keep your back relatively straight but tilted. Feel balanced and ready for action, with your weight evenly distributed.

When you stand like this, you look like a golfer. More importantly, you've created a runway for your arms to swing down and through without getting traffic jammed by your hips or legs. Practice this in front of a mirror, it might feel exaggerated, but it will look correct.

2. A Synchronized Backswing: Move as One Unit

How you start your swing sets the stage for how it finishes. A very common cause of getting stuck is when a player immediately pulls the club inside with just their hands and arms on the takeaway. This drags the club too deep and behind the body right from the start, making it almost impossible to recover.

The solution is a more "one-piece" takeaway. The feeling should be that the club, hands, arms, and shoulders start moving away from the ball together.

• Feel the triangle move: At address, your arms and shoulders form a triangle. Try to maintain that triangle as you begin the swing. For the first few feet, imagine it's your chest and shoulder turn that's moving the club away, not an independent hand action.
• Turn, don't sway: As you go back, focus on a rotational movement. You’re turning your torso inside a barrel, not sliding side-to-side. This keeps you centered and loaded up for a powerful, in-sequence downswing.
• Set the wrists naturally: As you turn your body, allow your wrists to hinge naturally. You don’t need to force this. The momentum of the clubhead swinging up will create a natural wrist set, which gets the club onto the correct plane - up and around your body, not just flat and behind it.

By starting with a connected, rotational Cbackswing, you keep the club "in front" of your body's turn. You're storing power in the right way and ensuring your arms are in a position where they can simply drop back down into that space you created at address.

3. The Downswing: Unwinding from the Ground Up

Here it is. This is the moment of truth where getting stuck happens. Most amateurs feel they need to start the downswing with a huge, fast unwinding of their shoulders and torso. This is the killer move. It's too much, too soon, and it leaves your arms in the dust.

The best ball strikers in the world do something very different. Their first move to start the downswing is subtle.

Instead of spinning, they initiate the downswing with a slight forward pressure shift to their lead foot. Think of it as a small, smooth "re-centering" towards the target. This tiny initial move does two amazing things:

1. It makes sure you hit the ball first and then the turf, creating a perfect divot after the ball for a compressed iron shot.
2. Critically, it buys your arms a split second of time to drop or fall from the top of the swing down into the space in front of your body.

Once your arms have dropped into this "slot," then you can unleash the rotation. With your arms back in front of you, your body's powerful turn will pull them through the ball at incredible speed without ever getting jammed. You will feel a feeling of freedom and effortless power that "stuck" players simply never experience.

A Drill to Feel the Sequence

This "pump drill" is fantastic for engraving this feeling:

1. Take your normal backswing to the top.
2. Start the downswing by just letting your arms drop to about waist height as you feel that pressure shift to your front foot. Stop.
3. Take the club back to the top of your swing again.
4. Repeat the drop-and-shift move.
5. On the third "pump," go ahead and swing through smoothly to a full finish.

This drill uncouples the violent "spin from the top" instinct and replaces it with the correct sequence of Shift, Drop, and Turn. It trains your arms to arrive on time for the party, not after it's already over.

Final Thoughts

Breaking free from getting stuck is about understanding it's a sequence problem, not a flaw in your arms. By building a solid setup that creates space, practicing a unified backswing, and training a downswing that starts with a calm shift before rotating, you give your swing the room it needs to be powerful, free, and consistent.

Knowing these concepts is the first huge step, but getting truly confident often comes from having guidance tailored to your specific swing. Our purpose in building Caddie AI is to put that expert Sklz right in your pocket. If this feeling of being "stuck" is a constant battle, you can ask for simple drills to fix it, or if you find yourself in a tricky lie that forces an awkward swing, you can even snap a photo of it and get instant strategic advice on how to get out of trouble and save your score.