Standing up through impact, often called ‘early extension’ (which refers to the hips pushing on a vector towards the ball) is one of the most common and destructive moves you can make.
Usually, as the hips either shift on the wrong vector, towards right center field, or you just shift straight at the ball through impact, your head will rise up and back the exact same distance. This is an attempt to maintain equilibrium so that you don’t fall over. And yet often, the golfer who early extends will still fall over their toes and lose balance.
What are the implications of this move? Unfortunately, there are many.
You will lose distance, as the common miss is the high right block, which climbs and slices and comes down dead with no roll. So spin is too high, landing angle too steep, and little roll. The clubface comes in hopelessly open. You will also lose precious angle of attack.
You will also lose a ton of accuracy. While the average golfer will simply continue to block the ball way right, the athletic one will learn how to flip the clubface over abruptly to keep from going right, setting up the bad pull hook or duck hook.
The worst thing that can happen is you can go Tin Cup, falling into a shanking fit, which will really make you want to quit. This is because the clubface comes in so wide open, that the hosel is leading directly into the ball.
Consistency is thereby lost, with the stand up move creating a bad two way miss with no way of knowing which curve will present itself on any given tee.
Early extension absolutely wrecks the handle path.
In the members area, we spend a lot of time focusing on learning how to maintain the posture throughout the swing, so this problem never arises. But if it’s already too late, and you’ve gotten in the habit, check out the video I posted on Youtube for some fixes you can do at home or on the range:
Please hit the subscribe button, as there are tons of informative videos there with more coming.
If you’re ever going to break off your plateau to the next level, you will need to learn how to keep your spine angle more constant throughout the swing. You won’t need to be perfect, but you will probably need to be better.