8 Golf Early Extension Drills to Fix Your Posture and Ball-Striking
On this page13
- 01Chair or Wall Drill
- 02Resistance-Band Around the Hips Drill
- 03Squat-to-Turn Drill
- 04Alignment-Stick Belt-Line Drill
- 05Trail-Foot Reverse Drill
- 06Butt-Back Half-Swing Drill
- 07Cushion or Foam-Roller Drill
- 08Split-Stance Rotation Drill
- 09How We Ranked These Drills
- 10What Early Extension Actually Is
- 11Drill Selector: Match the Drill to Your Symptom
- 12Common Mistakes That Keep Early Extension Coming Back
- 13A Simple 3-Week Practice Plan
Drills are ranked by how fast they change the fault, not by difficulty. The top spots go to feedback drills that punish the forward thrust the instant it happens, because a fault you can feel in real time fixes faster than one you only see on video afterward. Lower-ranked drills earn their place by rebuilding the correct hip action for good once the feel is there.
- Instant feedback
Chair or Wall Drill
This ranks first because the feedback is impossible to fake. Set up with your backside lightly touching the front edge of a chair, a wall, or an alignment stick stuck in the ground behind you, make slow swings, and keep your trail glute in contact into the downswing before your lead glute rotates back to meet the surface through impact. The moment you thrust forward, you lose the contact and you know it in real time. It beats every video-only drill below because you correct the fault during the swing, not after.
Golf.com's chair drill, taught by former tour coach Chris Como, uses the same setup and is the cleanest way to feel the correct amount of knee flex to hold through the strike. Start here before anything else, even if your setup itself needs work first via our guide on how to swing a golf club.
Fixes: forward hip thrust · Feedback: instant, tactile · Gear: a chair or wall
- Load trainer
Resistance-Band Around the Hips Drill
The band drill ranks just below the chair drill because it adds the one thing a static wall can't: live resistance. Loop a resistance band around your hips and anchor it in front of you so it actively pulls your pelvis toward the ball, then swing while holding your hips back against the tension. It exaggerates the exact force you're fighting, so the correction sticks under load instead of only at slow, unloaded speed.
Use it after the chair drill, not instead of it. The wall teaches the position; the band proves you can hold that position when something is dragging you out of it, which is closer to what a full-speed swing actually feels like.
Fixes: hip direction under load · Reps: 10 slow · Gear: a resistance band
- Movement rebuild
Squat-to-Turn Drill
This is the highest-ranked drill that rebuilds the move rather than just flags the fault. Take your address posture and rehearse the downswing feeling of your lead hip clearing up and back, as if sitting into a chair behind you, then rotating open — "squat down, then turn," never "stand up." It installs the pressure-shift-then-rotate sequence that keeps the pelvis behind the ball.
It ranks above the video-check drills below because it targets the cause, not the symptom: early extension is a rotation failure, and this drill trains rotation directly. It pairs naturally with the wider set in our golf swing drills guide once the feel holds.
Fixes: lower-body sequencing · Cue: squat, then turn · Gear: none
- Visual check
Alignment-Stick Belt-Line Drill
Slide an alignment stick through your belt loops so one end points out behind you, note where it aims at the ground at address, then keep it pointing at roughly that same spot through the downswing instead of tilting up at the sky. When the hips thrust in, the stick rises — a clean visual cue you can confirm on video.
It sits below the feel-based drills because the feedback comes after the swing, on the screen, not during it. That makes it a superb check on the work you did in the top three, but a slower teacher on its own.
Fixes: spine angle · Feedback: visual, on video · Gear: an alignment stick
- Pressure fix
Trail-Foot Reverse Drill
Drop your trail foot back onto its toe at address, or hit soft shots off your lead leg with the trail heel lifted. This kills the instinct to push off the trail side into the ball and forces your weight forward and rotating. It ranks here because it attacks a specific root cause — a stalled pressure shift — rather than the whole pattern.
It doubles as a low-point trainer, so you get cleaner contact as a side effect of moving your weight the right direction. Treat it as a targeted supplement when your miss is a fat or thin strike, not a full rebuild.
Fixes: pressure shift · Bonus: low-point control · Gear: none
- Speed bridge
Butt-Back Half-Swing Drill
Make L-to-L half swings — lead arm parallel back to trail arm parallel through — while exaggerating the feeling of your backside moving away from the ball toward the wall behind you. Keep the swings slow and the strikes flush. This ranks in the back half because it's a bridge drill: it only works once the top drills have installed the feel, and its job is to carry that feel toward speed.
Building the move at half speed first is what lets it survive the jump to full speed, the same staged approach in our golf ball striking drills guide for compressing the ball.
Fixes: retaining the feel at speed · Swing: L-to-L, slow · Gear: none
- Muscle wake-up
Cushion or Foam-Roller Drill
Place a foam roller or firm cushion against a wall behind your trail hip, set up so it lightly touches, and press your trail glute back into it during transition rather than off it. This wakes up the glutes — the muscles that pull the hips back and rotate them — so it targets a hidden physical driver rather than the swing shape itself.
It ranks low only because glute activation is a supporting fix, not the whole cure: it makes the top drills work better for desk-bound golfers whose glutes have gone quiet, but it won't rebuild sequencing on its own.
Fixes: glute engagement · Target: trail-side push · Gear: foam roller or cushion
- Rotation default
Split-Stance Rotation Drill
Set up in a narrow split stance with your trail foot dropped well back, then make swings focused purely on rotating your hips open through impact. With the base narrowed, there's nowhere to thrust to, so the body defaults to turning. It ranks last as a reinforcement drill — a clean way to prove the rotation habit has taken, rather than the drill that first teaches it.
It trains the same clearing action you need to hit a controlled driver, reinforced in our guide on how to hit a driver, where staying in posture keeps the low point behind the ball.
Fixes: rotation over thrust · Setup: narrow split stance · Gear: none
Reader interaction
Build your ranking
Drag the names into the order you think is right — or use the arrows — then submit to see how your list compares with everyone else's.
- Chair or Wall Drill
- Resistance-Band Around the Hips Drill
- Squat-to-Turn Drill
- Alignment-Stick Belt-Line Drill
- Trail-Foot Reverse Drill
- Butt-Back Half-Swing Drill
- Cushion or Foam-Roller Drill
- Split-Stance Rotation Drill
Audience ranking
How everyone ranked them
Built from reader rankings using position-based points.
Golf early extension drills fix one specific fault: your hips and spine thrusting toward the ball on the downswing, which stands you up out of your posture and wrecks contact. The eight drills above are ordered from fastest feedback to deepest rebuild — start at the top and work down as each feel takes hold. This section explains how the ranking was built and gives you the context to use the drills well.
How We Ranked These Drills
The order is built on one principle: how fast a drill changes the fault. Early extension is an instinctive move, so the drills that let you feel it happening during the swing retrain the body faster than drills that only reveal it afterward on video.
That puts the tactile feedback drills — the chair drill and the resistance-band drill — at the top, because you correct the thrust in real time. Movement-rebuild drills like squat-to-turn rank next, since they install the correct hip action rather than just flag the wrong one. Visual-check and targeted supplement drills sit lower: they’re valuable, but they either lag the swing (you read them on screen) or fix one contributing cause rather than the whole pattern. None of the lower-ranked drills are optional junk — they’re the reinforcement layer once the top drills have done the heavy lifting.
What Early Extension Actually Is
Early extension is the loss of your address spine angle during the downswing: the pelvis moves in toward the ball and the torso rises, closing the space your arms need to swing down. To save the shot your hands either flip, producing a hook, or stall, producing a thin block right, so it shows up as wildly inconsistent contact.
It usually traces back to poor sequencing and limited hip mobility, and it’s one of the most common reasons a fundamentally sound setup still produces bad strikes. If your grip is part of the problem, fix that first with our guide on how to grip a golf club so the drills have a stable base. The goal of every drill is the same: hips back and rotating, spine angle held.
Drill Selector: Match the Drill to Your Symptom
| Your main symptom | Start with | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Thin shots and blocks right | Chair or Wall Drill | Instant feedback on the forward thrust |
| Fault returns at full speed | Butt-Back Half-Swing Drill | Bridges the feel from slow to fast |
| Fat/thin, weight stuck back | Trail-Foot Reverse Drill | Forces the pressure shift forward |
| Body stands up, can’t rotate | Squat-to-Turn Drill | Rebuilds the rotate-in-place move |
| Desk-bound, quiet glutes | Cushion or Foam-Roller Drill | Wakes up the muscles that hold posture |
Common Mistakes That Keep Early Extension Coming Back
Drilling the swing but ignoring mobility. If tight hips or ankles physically stop you rotating in place, no swing thought holds. Add hip internal-rotation and glute work alongside the drills.
Going full speed too soon. Early extension is a save move that reappears the instant you swing hard. Groove every drill slowly, then layer speed in gradually the way our how to increase golf swing speed routine does.
Blaming the wrong miss. Golfers chase a slice fix with grip and path changes when the real culprit is hips thrusting in and trapping the club. Check your posture on video first.
A Simple 3-Week Practice Plan
Week 1 — Feel the fault. Chair drill and belt-line stick drill, 15 slow reps, four days, no ball. The only goal is keeping your hips back.
Week 2 — Add the ball, stay slow. Same two drills, but hit soft half-shots at 50% speed after every few reps, watching for cleaner, more centered contact.
Week 3 — Build to full speed. Add the squat-to-turn and split-stance drills, then hit full-speed shots while checking on video that your hips stay back. The fix has to survive the jump to full speed, which is why speed comes last.
Once the move holds up, it improves every part of your game, from flush irons to short-side recoveries — even a bunker shot rewards staying in posture, and the same principle carries into the touch drills in our golf short game drills guide. Fix the thrust once and your whole strike pattern tightens.
Frequently asked questions
What causes early extension in the golf swing?+
Early extension is usually caused by the hips thrusting toward the ball on the downswing instead of rotating and staying back. It often comes from limited hip mobility, poor sequencing that leads with the upper body, an open clubface at the top that forces a save, or an instinctive move to create room for the arms when the club gets stuck behind the body. Tight hamstrings and weak glutes commonly sit underneath it.
How do I know if I have early extension?+
Film your swing from behind, down the target line. Draw a line up your backside at address; if your hips push forward past that line toward the ball on the downswing and your belt buckle rises, you have early extension. On the course the symptoms are chronic thin shots, blocks that leak right, and the occasional snap hook when your hands flip to rescue a trapped club. The video test is the reliable one.
Can early extension be fixed for good?+
Yes. Early extension is a movement habit, not a permanent flaw, so it responds well to feedback drills like the chair and band drills that punish the forward thrust instantly. Most golfers see a clear change within two to four weeks of daily practice. The fix only sticks if you also address any hip-mobility or glute limitation underneath it; otherwise the body reverts to standing up the moment you swing hard.
Does early extension cause a slice or a hook?+
It can cause both. When your hips thrust in, the club gets trapped behind you; from there you either flip the hands to save it, producing a hook, or hold the face open and leave a block or slice. That's why golfers chasing a slice with grip and path changes often miss the real cause. Fix the forward thrust and you remove the root of both misses at once.
What is the single best drill for early extension?+
The chair or wall drill is the best starting point because the feedback is instant and unmissable. You set up with your backside lightly touching a chair or wall and keep contact through the downswing; if your hips lose the surface, you extended early. It trains the exact feeling of keeping the hips back and rotating, and unlike a video check, it corrects you during the swing rather than after it. Master it before layering in other drills.
Is early extension a mobility problem or a technique problem?+
It is often both. Limited hip internal rotation, tight ankles, and stiff hip flexors can force the body to stand up because it physically cannot rotate in place. Drills fix the technique, but pairing them with hip-mobility and glute-activation work removes the restriction that caused the compensation to begin with. If drills alone keep failing, get your hip mobility assessed before assuming the problem is purely your swing.
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