How to Stop Lifting Up in the Golf Downswing

Nothing is more frustrating than a purely struck shot that suddenly turns into a thin, skulled missile across the green or a topped ball that barely trickles off the tee. That dreaded feeling of your body lifting up through the downswing is one of the most common - and destructive - faults in golf. This is an article focused on understanding why you lift up and providing concrete, actionable steps and drills to help you stay down through the ball, compress it properly, and achieve the solid contact you’re looking for.

Why Do We Lift Up in the Downswing? Understanding the Root Cause

Before we can fix the problem, we need to understand where it comes from. For most golfers, lifting up - technically known as "Early Extension" - isn't a conscious decision. It's an ingrained, almost primal reaction. Your brain understands the goal is to get the ball airborne, and its misguided instinct is to "help" the ball up by lifting the arms, shoulders, and torso.

Here’s a breakdown of the common culprits:

• The "Hit" Instinct: Many golfers have an impulse to hit at the ball rather than swing through it. At the top of the backswing, you've coiled up this power, and the instinct is to throw all that energy directly at the back of the ball. This often takes the form of an upper-body lunge, which forces the hips to push forward toward the ball and the spine angle to rise.
• A Misunderstanding of Impact: You see the ball on the ground and feel you need to scoop it into the air. This scooping motion involves straightening your wrists and lifting your chest. In reality, modern golf clubs are designed with loft precisely to get the ball airborne. Your job is to deliver the clubhead down to the ball, the club's design takes care of the launch.
• Poor Sequencing: The ideal downswing starts from the ground up. The hips begin to unwind, followed by the torso, then the arms, and finally the club. When this sequence is out of order - for instance, if the arms and shoulders start the downswing first - the lower body has no choice but to "clear space" by thrusting forward and up. This is a compensation move that makes consistent contact nearly impossible.
• Physical Limitations: Sometimes, a lack of mobility in the hips or thoracic spine (mid-back) can prevent you from rotating properly. If your body physically cannot turn through the shot while maintaining posture, it will often choose the path of least resistance: standing up.

At its core, lifting up is a survival instinct gone wrong. Your body is trying to create power and make room for the club, but it’s doing so in a way that destroys your chances of a good strike. The solution is to retrain these instincts and give your body a better plan.

The "Ball-First" Secret: Changing Your Impact Intention

The single biggest mental shift you can make is to change your objective. Stop trying to lift the golf ball. Instead, focus on hitting the golf ball first, and then the ground. This is the golden rule of iron play, often referred to as "compressing the ball."

Think about a tour pro's divot. It almost always appears in front of where the ball was resting. This is not some special technique reserved for the best players, it's the fundamental goal of a good iron swing. By hitting down on the ball, you are using the club's built-in loft to its full potential.

How a Downward Strike Makes the Ball Go Up

It's a strange paradox, but hitting down is what creates a high, powerful ball flight with an iron. When the clubhead contacts the ball on a descending path, it "compresses" the ball against the clubface. At the same time, the club's loft (the angle of the clubface) launches the ball upward with backspin. This backspin helps the ball climb and then land softly on the green.

If you try to "help" the ball up, you are actively doing the opposite. Your swing arc "bottoms out" behind the ball, leading to either a thin shot (catching the ball's equator) or a fat shot (hitting the ground first). If you lift up dramatically, you might miss the lower half of the ball entirely, causing a top.

So, from now on, your swing thought is simple: drive the clubhead down and through the spot where the ball is resting. Trust that the loft of the club will do the work of getting it airborne.

Maintaining Your Posture: The Feeling You Need

Alright, so we know we need to hit down, but how do we get our bodies to cooperate? The key is learning to maintain the posture you established at address. The tilts and angles you create at setup are your roadmap for the swing, and the goal is to rotate around your spine while largely preserving that initial forward bend.

Here’s the sensation you’re looking for:

• Chest Over the Ball: A great feeling to have through impact is that your chest is still pointing down at - or even slightly ahead of - the golf ball. Players who lift up will find their chest facing the sky too early. As you swing down, imagine you have a flashlight on your sternum and you want to keep that beam of light shining on the ground where the ball sits all the way through impact.
• Belt Buckle Points Down, Then Turns: At setup, your belt buckle is pointing slightly toward the ground. As you transition into the downswing, it a powerful an ineffectual move to fire the belt buckle _out_ and towards toward the golf ball out. The players, move their hips, so the buckle on their lower on points _at_ the ball at impact not _to_ the sky. After impact your buckle then rotates around towards the-towards. This encourages your hips to _turn_, not a to just stand-fire it up and forward forward. Just think of having more of a side bend through impact, not having your body in just an an and upright posture to the ball. And you would want feel as if the chest chest still still pointed down down towards ball not not pointed straight.
• Stay "In the Cylinder": Imagine you are swinging inside a narrow cylinder or between two walls. In the backswing, you rotate and turn backswing you stay turn keep the the confines in confines that of a-cy of of walls. In the the cylinder not move your-not sway your head forward. And then we, then as we as unwind we want our body going toward the-forward inside in inside same the "wall". Your "wall. And this your your head, won't forward not sway your or move your or behind forward and your you're hips swing around your-stay inside. Players the side of your your body and body early extend your and you're moving will fire-body your will your your and into your toward front of "cylinder".
of cylinder". And the that your swing swing down your you don't this. feel that.

Focusing on rotation instead of lifting is the core mechanical change. You have already coiled your body in the backswing, the downswing is simply the an uncoiling of coil turn. The energy moves _around_ and not up.

Three Actionable Drills to Stop Lifting Up

Understanding concepts is one thing, feeling them is another. These drills are designed to give you the physical feedback you need to stop early extension and ingrain the feeling of staying down through the shot.

Drill 1: The Alignment Stick Behind You

This is the classic, go-to drill for fixing early extension because it provides immediate, non-negotiable feedback.

1. Take your normal setup posture.
2. Have a friend place an alignment stick or a spare golf shaft in the ground directly behind you, so that it is angled forward and just barely rests against your backside. Alternatively, you can do this by backing up to a golf bag or a wall.
3. The goal is simple: make swings without losing contact with the stick. As you swing back, your right hip (for a right-handed golfer) should deepen its contact with the stick. As you swing down, you need to turn your hips so that your left hip replaces your right hip in touching the stick. Your backside should trace along the stick.
4. What it prevents: If you thrust your hips forward toward the ball, you will immediately lose contact with the stick. It forces you to learn how to create space by rotating, not by standing up. Start with slow, half-swings to get the feel, and gradually build up speed.

Drill 2: The Headcover "Gate"

This drill helps you manage your swing path and encourages a downward angle of attack, two things that are disrupted by lifting up.

1. Place a golf ball on the ground to hit.
2. Place an empty headcover or a rolled-up towel on the ground about one foot directly behind your ball, on your target line.
3. The objective is to make a swing and hit the ball without hitting the headcover on the downswing.
4. What it prevents: Players who lift and "throw" the club from the top often have a swing path that comes too far from the inside and too shallow. This will cause them to hit the headcover every time. To miss the headcover, you must start the downswing with a proper sequence, allowing the club to "drop" in front of you on a steeper plane before shallowing out naturally at impact. It forces you to keep the club in front of your body's rotation.

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Drill 3: The "Split-Grip" Swing

This drill helps you feel how the arms and body should work together to maintain a wide arc and prevent that "scooping" motion where the arms collapse and the body lifts.

1. Take your club and grip it normally with your lead hand (left hand for righties).
2. Slide your trail hand (right hand for righties) about six inches down the shaft. You now have a "split grip".
3. Make some practice swings. Instantly, you will feel that your trail arm has to stay much straighter through the impact zone. The wide separation of your hands makes it very difficult to "flick" your wrists or collapse your arms.
4. What it prevents: It exaggerates the feeling of a wide swing arc and keeping extension through the ball. In order to swing this way, your body must continue rotating to accommodate the club’s path. You will physically feel your chest stay over the ball longer. After a few practice swings, go back to your normal grip and try to replicate that same feeling of width and rotation.

Final Thoughts

Stopping yourself from lifting up in the downswing is all about retraining your instincts. It starts with mentally reframing your goal from lifting the ball to hitting down and through it, and physically learning to rotate your body while maintaining your posture. Use the drills provided to translate these ideas into real feelings, and be patient - it takes repetition to overwrite old habits.

Building new swing habits and making them stick on the course can be a challenge. We built Caddie AI to serve as your personal 24/7 golf coach and on-course strategist. Need a second opinion on a weird lie where your old instincts might take over? Snap a picture and get immediate advice. If you’re practicing a drill and have a question about feel or execution, just ask. Our goal is to give you instant, expert-level feedback to take the guesswork out of the game, helping you make smarter choices and commit to every swing with confidence.