3 Drills To Fix Early Extension In The Golf Swing

Your swings felt fine on the range but when you watched the video, your hips were moving toward the ball, your chest was popping up and your posture was disappearing, right when you need space the most. That is early extension and it can wreck contact in a hurry. The good news is that this problem usually gets better when you stop chasing random fixes and start using drills that teach your body what better motion actually feels like.

What’s early extension?

Early extension is the moment your pelvis moves toward the ball instead of staying back and rotating. When that happens, the room you had for your arms and club starts to vanish. Your hands get crowded, the club gets thrown out and you wind up hitting shots thin, heavy, heel-side, or all over the clubface.

The important thing is that early extension is usually a compensation, not the root problem. A lot of golfers are not simply standing up for no reason. They often lack depth in the backswing, lose pressure on the trailing foot or never learn how the pelvis should tilt and rotate through the strike. That is why yelling at yourself to stay down rarely works for long. With my students, I keep coming back to drills that create the right motion instead of forcing a band-aid fix. These three are ones I use most often and they reflect some of the best ideas from fellow instructors whose work I really admire.

Drill 1: The wall drill (done properly)

The wall drill from Top Speed Golf is still one of the best ways to build the right feel. It is also one I have leaned on with my own students because it gives instant feedback without turning the swing into a science project. Set up in your golf posture with your rear end lightly touching a wall. Then choke down a little on the club and take a couple of steps forward so your hips are just off the wall. From there, make a backswing and feel your trail hip, or trail pocket, work back toward the wall as you turn.

Now rehearse the transition. As you start down, feel your lower body settle and rotate instead of driving toward the ball. Let the club work down the wall while your lead hip begins to clear back. By the time you move into the through-swing, the lead glute should be the side interacting with the wall. That is the big lesson of the drill. You are not trying to freeze your hips. You are learning how one hip works back in the backswing and the other clears back in the downswing.

Start without a ball and do it slowly. If the wall loses you right away, that is useful feedback. Once you can move from trail-hip depth to lead-hip depth without lunging toward the ball, add some half-swings. The wall gives you a simple checkpoint for staying in posture while still making a real turn.

Drill 2: The early-thrust reset drill

The Athletic Motion video makes a smart point that a lot of golfers miss: many players try to fix early extension with a bad version of the chair drill and only get more stuck. For reference, the chair drill is a simple practice move where you set up with your backside lightly touching a chair at address to help train hip depth and keep the pelvis from moving toward the ball. Pinning your backside in place is not the answer. The better feel is learning how the pelvis can stay back, tilt correctly and still rotate with speed. Set up in golf posture with your arms across your chest or hold a club across your shoulders and make slow rehearsals without a ball.

As you turn back, let the trail hip work behind you. Then, starting down, feel the pelvis tuck under slightly as the lead hip begins to clear back and around. Think less about shoving your belt buckle at the ball and more about creating room. Your chest stays inclined, your knees keep working and your hips rotate instead of jumping toward the ball. That is the difference between an athletic move and a panic move.

This is where many golfers finally realize why the old advice of the Chair Drill can be misleading. Good players do not just keep their rear end on a line and hope for the best. They create depth, then use pelvic tilt and rotation to keep that depth long enough for the club to shallow and deliver. If you rehearse this slowly in front of a mirror, you will usually see the problem more clearly and feel the fix faster.

Do 10 to 15 slow reps, then make waist-high swings with the same feel. If your hips fire toward the ball, stop and reset. If they stay back while the lead side clears, you are moving in the right direction. This drill is about better body movement, not about holding a pose.

Drill 3: The trail-foot pressure drill

The Eric Cogorno and Trevor Salzman video adds a really useful pressure cue. I like this one a lot because it is simple, it is measurable and it has helped a number of my students who need a better sense of where the trail side should work in the backswing. Place a golf ball under the trail foot toward the outside of the forefoot, around the pinky-toe side. The idea is not to balance there forever. The idea is to use that pressure point as feedback so the trail hip works back instead of the whole pelvis drifting toward the ball.

Make some slow backswings and feel the pressure under that part of the foot as a platform to push the trail hip behind you. If you roll off it or sway badly, you will know it immediately. From there, swing through and let the pressure move naturally, but keep the sense that the trail side created depth first. For a lot of golfers, this one feel makes early extension much harder to do because the hips finally have somewhere to go besides toward the ball.

Start with rehearsal swings, then move to half-speed shots. You can even make small punch swings at first. If the contact improves and the club stops crowding you, that is your proof. This drill gives you a simple way to feel a better backswing load, better hip depth and a more centered motion all at once.

The simple truth

Early extension is frustrating but it is not random. Usually, your body is solving a problem the wrong way. The wall drill teaches depth and rotation. The early-thrust reset drill teaches you that staying back does not mean getting stuck. The trail-foot pressure drill teaches you how to create depth from the ground up. Put those three together and you are no longer just trying to stop a fault. You are building the motion that makes the fault less necessary in the first place.