How to Not Move Your Head in a Golf Swing

Thinking you need to keep your head perfectly still during your golf swing is one of the most common and damaging pieces of advice in the game. It leads to tension, restricts your turn, and frankly, makes hitting a good golf shot almost impossible. This article will show you what your head should actually be doing and provide simple, effective drills to build a stable, powerful swing.

The Myth of the "Still" Head

Let's clear this up right away: the best golfers in the world do not keep their heads perfectly still. Not a single one. If you froze their swing at the top, you'd see their head has both rotated and shifted slightly away from the target. If you froze it just after impact, you’d see it stayed down and back, but then released naturally into the finish. The goal isn't rigidity, it's stability.

Thinking "keep your head still" is like trying to drive a car by locking your arms and staring straight ahead without ever turning your neck. It’s a recipe for disaster. This advice often leads to a few common faults:

• A Restricted Backswing: If your head is locked in place, you can't complete a full shoulder turn. Your shoulders need to rotate around your spine, and to do that, your head must rotate with them - at least a little bit. By trying to keep your head frozen, you are forcing your body into a short, tight, and powerless backswing, often dominated by the arms.
• A Reverse Pivot: To compensate for a blocked shoulder turn, many golfers will shift their weight onto their front foot during the backswing, a move called a reverse pivot. This is a notorious power and consistency killer.
• Loss of Posture: Fighting to keep the head down can cause your whole upper body to collapse through the shot, rather than rotating athletically.

Instead of "keep your head still," I want you to start thinking "maintain your center" or "keep your head quiet." Your head operates within a small, defined zone. It can rotate and shift slightly inside this zone, but it shouldn't be lunging, dipping, or swaying wildly out of it. This small change in mindset can have-a-massive-impact and free you up to make a more athletic swing.

What Causes Too Much Head Movement Anyway?

If your head is moving all over the place, it's almost always a symptom of a different problem, not the problem itself. Understanding the real cause is the first step to fixing it. Here are the most common culprits.

1. Wanting to "Help" the Ball Into the Air

This is probably the number one reason amateur golfers lift their heads too early. There's a deep-seated instinct to lift or scoop the ball to get it airborne. This lifting motion starts with the hands and travels right up through the body, pulling your chest and head up and away from the ball before Tarentel. The paradox of golf is that you must hit _down_ on the ball to make it go up. Your irons are designed with loft to do this for you. Your job is to deliver the club to the back of the ball, the club's job is to send it flying. Looking up early to see a great shot almost guarantees you won't hit one.

2. Swaying Instead of Rotating

A good golf swing is a rotation around a fixed point (your spine). A poor golf swing is often a sway away from and then back toward the ball. When a golfer sways, their hips and shoulders slide laterally away from the target on the backswing. When this happens, your head has no choice but to go along for the ride. This excessive side-to-side movement makes it incredibly difficult to return the clubface to the same place at impact consistently. Remember the idea of swinging inside a cylinder? A sway breaks the walls of that cylinder immediately.

3. An Incorrect Power Source

Many golfers mistakenly believe power comes from a forceful lunge at the ball from the top. They heave their shoulders and chest at the ball, and consequently, their head shoots forward and down. True golf power is generated from the ground up: a sequence of movement that starts with the hips unwinding, which then pulls the torso, which then pulls the arms, and finally whips the club through the ball. The head an upper body are followers, not leaders, in this sequence. Trying to lead the swing with your upper body is a classic "over-the-top" move that brings your head with it and produces weak slices or pulls.

How Your Head Should Actually Move

Okay, so we know it doesn't stay perfectly still. What should it do? Let's break it down into phases.

The Set-Up and Backswing

At address, your head should be in a relaxed, neutral position, with your eyes trained on the golf ball. As you start your backswing, your primary feeling should be your chest and shoulders rotating away from the target. As your shoulders turn, your head should feel like it's rotating on a pivot point at the base of your neck. For a right-handed golfer, this means your chin will move a few inches to the right, comfortably over your right shoulder at the top. This is a good thing! It's a sign that you have achieved a full, connected shoulder turn. Your head remains relatively centered, but it absolutely pivots to accommodate the turn.

The Downswing and Impact

This is the moment of truth. As you begin the downswing, the first move is a slight shift of the hips toward the target, which establishes the low point of your swing in front of the ball. The most important part for your head is this: your head stays back. As your body unwinds, your head should feel like it remains behind the golf ball. It doesn't lunge forward with your hips.

A great feeling to have is that at the moment of impact, your right ear is pointed more toward the ground (for a righty). This means you have retained your spine angle and are delivering the club from behind the ball - a signature move of every great ball-striker. Your focus remains on the spot where the ball was. You are letting the club 'swing past' your body. Letting your head release too soon ruins this perfect impact dynamic.

The Finish

Only after the ball is gone and your arms have extended towards the target does your head release. It happens naturally. As your body continues to rotate through to a full, balanced finish, your head comes up and turns to face the target, allowing your eyes to track the ball's flight. If you've stayed "behind the ball" properly through impact, this release feels effortless and athletic. Trying to pin your head down long after impact is just as bad as looking up too early, it restricts the natural conclusion of the swing's momentum.

Simple Drills to Build Head Stability

Awareness is great, but muscle memory is built through repetition. Here are four simple drills you can do at the range or even at home to train a quieter head.

Drill 1: The Head-Against-The-Wall

This is a an oldie but a goodie for a reason. It's the best way to feel the difference between swaying and rotating.

1. Without a club, get into your golf posture a few inches away from a wall, so that the player-side your head (the left side for a righty) is just lightly touching it.
2. Make slow, deliberate backswings. The goal is to feel your back rotate away from the target while keeping your head in light contact with the wall.
3. If you sway, you will feel your head push hard into the wall. If you lift up, you'll lose contact completely. You'll learn to feel what a proper, centered rotation is supposed create.

Drill 2: Stare at a Dimple

Often, golfers 'look' at the ball, but they don't really 'see' it. This drill trains intense focus.

1. Place a ball on the ground and find one specific dimple on the back-center portion of it. You can even make a small dot there with a sharpie.
2. Take small, chest-to-chest practice swings with a wedge. Your only goal is to keep your eyes laser-focused on that specific dimple.
3. Watch the clubhead strike the area where the dot is. Try to keep your eyes on the turf where the dot used to be for a split second after the ball is gone.
4. This drill trains your eyes to stay fixed, which in turn helps keep your entire head from flinching or looking up prematurely.

Drill 3: The Chin and Towel "Checkpoint"

This drill helps train your head to stay down 'through the shot' without being rigid.

1. Roll up a small hand towel and tuck it under your left armpit (for a right-hander) so it rests along your chest and front shoulder.
2. Take your setup. Your chin should be resting just slightly over the top of the towel. This is your "home" position.
3. As you swing back, your chin should rotate away from the towel. The magic happens in the downswing. You want to feel your chin return approximately over the towel as you come through impact, before releasing naturally into your follow-through.
4. If you lift your head early, your chin will be miles above the towel. If you lunge forward, your chin will smash down onto it. It's a fantastic sensory checkpoint.

Final Thoughts

Getting your head to move correctly isn't about freezing it in place, but about learning to keep it stable while your body makes. an athletic and complete rotation around it. Focus on turning your body correctly an allow your head to respond, not lead, and you will see a tremendous improvement in your Cállens striking, power, and consistency.

Knowing why you move your head is half the battle, the other half is diligent practice. But if you’re unsure if head movement is the true source of your struggles, a second opinion can make all the difference. We built Caddie AI to be that instant, on-demand coach. You can ask for drills tailored-to a-specific problem, like quieting your head, or describe your miss and get insight into the likely cause an feeling ready to get the most from every practice session by working on the right things.