How to Stop Coming Up on Your Toes in a Golf Swing

Feeling that lurch forward onto your toes right at the moment of impact is one of golf's most frustrating and power-sapping habits. It often comes out of nowhere, leading to thin shots that scream across the green, shanks that dart sideways, and a nagging feeling that you're leaving yards on the table. This guide will walk you through exactly why this happens and give you simple, practical drills to help you stay grounded, balanced, and ready to deliver solid contact every time.

Why Am I Coming Up On My Toes? Unpacking the Root Causes

First things first, coming up on your toes isn't just a foot problem, it's a symptom that your body is compensating for something else going wrong in your swing. To fix it for good, we need to look at what's actually causing this reaction. More often than not, it boils down to one of these common issues.

The Search for Power (The Wrong Way)

Many golfers, especially those wanting more distance, have a natural instinct to "help" the ball into the air. This often turns into an upward "jumping" or "thrusting" motion with the lower body. You feel like you need to add something extra to generate speed, so you push up and out toward the ball. While an explosive upward force is present in elite swings (it's called ground reaction force), for most amateur players, it manifests as a poorly timed lurch that throws off balance and wrecks the club's path. Instead of rotating powerfully around your spine, you end up jumping out of your posture.

Losing Your Posture and "Early Extension"

This is probably the single most common cause of coming up on your toes. "Early extension" is a term you might have heard. In simple terms, it means your hips and pelvis move toward the golf ball during the downswing, instead of rotating back and away. When your hips thrust forward, your spine angle lifts up, and your chest pulls away from the ball. This leaves your arms with nowhere to go. To make contact, you have no choice but to stand up and come onto your toes, forcing an awkward, cramped swing through impact.

This often starts right at setup. If you're standing too tall or too far from the ball, your body knows it will have trouble reaching it, so it builds in a forward lunge to compensate. A weak postural setup is a primary trigger for early extension.

An Unstable Base and Incorrect Weight Shift

Your golf swing is an athletic sequence that requires a stable foundation. If your weight is already on your toes at setup, you have nowhere to go but further up onto them. Likewise, a bad weight shift can throw you off balance. Many players who struggle with this will sway their hips too far to the right (for a right-handed golfer) on the backswing. From this out-of-position spot, the body's natural recovery move is to lunge forward in the downswing to try to get back to the ball, which again pushes you up onto your toes. A proper swing involves rotation around a stable axis, not a big sway back and forth.

An Over-the-Top Swing Path

Sometimes, coming up on your toes is a rescue mission. An "over-the-top" swing is when you start the downswing by throwing your hands, arms, and shoulders out and away from your body, causing the club to travel on a steep, outside-to-in path. If your hips didn't move out of the way (by extending early), you would bury the club in the ground a foot behind the ball. Your brain knows this, so it instinctively tells your body to stand up and create room for the steep swing to bottom out somewhere near the ball. It's an athletic but ultimately destructive compensation.

Building a Foundation for Balance: The Setup Fixes

You can prevent many of these issues before you even start the club back. A stable, athletic setup gives your body the best chance to stay in posture and rotate correctly. Spend a few extra seconds on these points.

Nail Your Posture and Spine Angle

This is your best defense against early extension. Following a good setup routine is fundamental. Get into an athletic stance by bending from your hips, not your waist. Feel like you are pushing your bottom back, which allows your upper body to tilt forward while your back remains relatively straight.

From here, let your arms hang naturally straight down from your shoulders. This point is a game-changer. If your arms hang freely and there's a little space (a few inches) between the tops of your hands and your thighs, you've created enough room to swing without needing to stand up. If your hands are jammed up against your body, you need more hip bend and spine tilt.

Check Your Weight Distribution at Address

Feel the pressure in your feet. To start, your weight should be balanced 50/50 between your left and right foot (for an iron shot). More importantly, the pressure should be on the balls of your feet. This is the spot where a basketball player defends or a tennis player awaits a serve. It’s balanced and athletic.

• If you feel pressure in your heels, you're likely to fall back or rock forward onto your toes to maintain balance during the swing.
• If you're already on your toes, you're starting in an unstable position and will almost certainly come further up onto them.

Gently rock back and forth from your toes to your heels until you feel that centered, ready-for-anything position in the middle of your feet.

Simple Drills to Stay Grounded Through the Swing

Understanding the causes is important, but true change happens by feeling the correct movement. These drills give you physical feedback to train your body to stay down, balanced, and rotating properly.

Drill 1: The Chair/Headcover Behind You

This is the classic drill to cure early extension. Place an alignment stick in the ground just outside your trail hip, or set up with a chair or your golf bag lightly touching your backside. As you swing, your goal is to make your trail hip pocket rotate *back* and away from the ball into the chair, and then have your lead hip work back into the chair through impact.

If you lunge your hips toward the ball (early extension), you'll immediately lose contact in the downswing. This drill programs the feeling of your hips rotating deeper instead of thrusting forward, which is essential for staying in your posture and keeping your feet flat.

Drill 2: The Wedge Under the Toes

This drill provides immediate, unmissable feedback. Take an old wedge and place it on the ground under the toes of your lead foot, with the shaft pointing away from you. The clubface will essentially be under the front part of your foot.

Now, make some smooth practice swings. Your goal is simply to keep your foot from smashing down onto the wedge. The only way to do this is by keeping your weight back toward the middle of your foot and heel through impact. If you come up on your toes and then crash back down, you will feel and hear your foot hitting the club. This promotes a smoother, more rotational weight transfer where pressure flows into the lead heel, not up onto the lead toe.

Drill 3: The 'Feet Together' Drill

A timeless favorite of some of the best ball-strikers. Hit short shots (7-iron or less) with your feet completely touching. Don't try to make huge swings, just focus on 50-70 yard pitches. The narrow base gives you very little room to cheat. Any sort of lunge, sway, or jump will cause you to completely lose your balance and likely miss the ball cleanly.

This drill forces you to rotate your torso around a fixed center point. It shines a spotlight on your balance and teaches your body and arms to sync up in a smooth, connected motion. If you can hit solid shots with your feet together, you're learning how to stay centered and balanced - which is the polar opposite of jumping up on your toes.

Putting It All Together: The Swing Feel

As you take this to the course, you don’t want to be thinking about five different mechanical points. You need one simple swing feel. Try this one: "Rotate and Press Down."

On the downswing, feel like you are using the ground for leverage. As you start to unwind, feel the pressure in your lead foot press down into the ground, especially into your lead heel. Imagine you are trying to squash a bug under the heel of your lead foot. This is a powerful, rotational move that keeps you connected to the ground. It's the complete opposite of lifting or jumping. This sensation encourages your hips to rotate and clear out of the way, allowing your posture to a remain stable and your feet to stay firmly planted.

Final Thoughts

Coming up on your toes is a balance-killer that robs you of power and consistency, but it is entirely fixable. By building an athletic setup, understanding the need for body rotation over upward lifting, and practicing drills that encourage you to stay grounded, you can cure this habit and replace it with the feeling of rock-solid, centered contact.

Perfecting a new feel often comes down to understanding the cause and effect in your particular swing. If you're ever stuck on the course or at the range and need a quick second opinion on a shot or swing fault, you can ask a question or even send a picture to Caddie AI. We are built to provide instant, expert-level feedback to help you understand what's really happening so you can get back to hitting solid shots with confidence.