Standing up in your golf swing is one of the most frustrating and power-sapping moves in the game. You feel like you make a good backswing, but on the way down, your body rises, your chest lifts, and contact becomes completely unpredictable - leading to thin shots, tops, and weak slices. This guide will break down precisely why you're lifting out of the shot and give you practical, effective drills to stay in your posture, compress the ball, and finally achieve that solid, pure strike.
In simple terms, "lifting up" means you are losing the posture and spine angle you established at address. At setup, you bend forward from your hips, creating an angle between your back and your legs. A good golf swing maintains this angle all the way through impact. Lifting up, also known by coaches as early extension, is when your hips and spine straighten up prematurely during the downswing.
Instead of your hips rotating open and your chest staying down, your hips thrust forward toward the golf ball. As your hips move closer to the ball, your body has no choice but to lift. This move pulls your torso up and away from the ball, forcing your hands and arms to make drastic, last-millisecond adjustments to even make contact. It’s a chain reaction that completely robs you of power and consistency.
The results of this flaw are all too common:
Golfers don't lift up because they're actively trying to. It’s almost always a reaction - a subconscious fix for another problem happening in the swing. If you can understand the cause, you're halfway to finding the cure. Here are the most common reasons why you might be early extending.
This is arguably the number one cause of early extension. Getting "stuck" means your arms and club drop too far to the inside or behind your body during the downswing. From this position, if you were to stay in your posture and rotate, you'd slam the club into the ground well behind the ball. Your body knows this instinctively. So, to make room for the club to get back to the ball without disaster, your hips thrust forward and your chest lifts up. This upward movement is your brain's clever, but flawed, way of creating space for your arms to swing through.
A good downswing is a beautiful sequence of rotation: the hips lead, followed by the torso, shoulders, and then the arms. Many amateurs initiate the downswing with their arms or shoulders, neglecting to get their hips open and out of the way. If your hips don't rotate open (meaning your lead hip clears back and away from the ball), they create a "traffic jam." Your arms have nowhere to swing. To solve this dilemma, the hips thrust forward toward the ball instead of rotating, which forces your entire upper body to straighten up.
Many golfers have a false impression that to get the ball in the air, you need to help "lift" it up. They try to scoop the ball, which involves pulling the body upward through impact. This is the opposite of how a powerful golf shot works, especially with your irons. Your irons are already designed with loft to get the ball airborne. Your job is to deliver that loft by hitting down and through the ball, striking the ball first and then the turf after. True power comes from compression (squeezing the ball against the clubface with a descending blow), not from lifting.
While less common, some players simply stand too far away from the ball at address. From that distance, their natural athletic instinct during the swing is to move a bit closer to the object they're trying to hit. Reaching for the ball at setup can make your body feel like it needs to lunge forward during the downswing, triggering the same hip thrust and lifting motion.
Understanding the "why" is great, but now it's time for the "how." These drills are designed to retrain your body's movement patterns and give you the feeling of staying down through the ball. Start slowly and don't worry about hitting a perfect shot at first - focus on the feeling of the movement.
This is the classic, can't-fail drill for curing early extension. It provides instant feedback on whether your hips are thrusting forward or rotating properly.
Sometimes a simple swing thought is all you need to unlock the right feeling. This one addresses the lack of hip rotation directly.
This drill seems simple, but it's fantastic for promoting a more centered rotation and killing any tendency to lunge or stand up violently. It forces calm, body-driven rotation.
This is a great visual and physical barrier to stop the hips from lunging forward.
Learning new movements happens on the range, not the course. When you first start with these drills, stay at the practice facility and hit balls at 50% speed. Your goal is not to hit a perfect shot, but to repeat the correct motions over and over. When you do head out to play, don’t try to think about all four drills at once. Pick one swing thought - like "left pocket back" - and stick with it for the entire round. Overthinking mechanics during a round is a recipe for disaster. Trust the feeling you grooved on the range and let it happen.
Lifting up in your swing is a deep-rooted habit, but it’s entirely fixable. By understanding that it’s a reaction to another flaw like getting stuck or not rotating, you can use targeted drills like the wall drill and simple feels like pulling the lead pocket back to retrain your body. Stick with it, have patience, and you will build a swing that stays down through the ball for that pure, powerful contact you're after.
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