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Early Extension - Timing | Late Or Early?

Early-extension can be one of the most stubborn patterns to break. While it is often attributed to movement limitations or a poor deep squat pattern, I believe there is a large percentage of players who fall into this category due to inefficient swing mechanics. Thankfully, if we pay attention to when this pattern occurs in the downswing, we can get a good idea for the underlying "cause and effect".

Tags: Poor Contact, Not Straight Enough, Not Enough Distance, Early Extension, Impact, Follow Through, Transition, Release, Concept, Advanced

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So, what are you having it early or late and what you need to do to solve it?

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Now jumping into early extension is generally referred to as the lower body moving excessively

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in towards the golf ball or the upper body backing away.

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Basically, it creates more of a vertical spine posture just like this.

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One of the things that I think is important when you're trying to fix that pattern is to understand

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why you're doing it because if you just focus on keeping your butt against the chair, that

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won't necessarily solve why you're doing it, I'll just put you in a position where you can

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feel if you're doing it or not.

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So, I want you to understand why you're doing it so you can solve it faster.

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There's two main reasons that golfers will fall into this early extension pattern and you

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can figure out which one you are based on the timing.

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So some golfers will look pretty good here in transition and then as they go into the

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release, they'll start going into this early extension either the upper body backing away

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or the lower body moving in towards the golf ball.

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If you're doing it in the second half of the downswing, it's probably more of a control thing.

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This early extension movement late in the downswing helps with two things.

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One, if I'm really steep, well early extension helps shallow it out late.

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And then two, if the club face is really open, if the club face is pointing way over

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there, when I pull away my arms will straighten and as my arms straighten, the club face

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will tend to rotate more clothes, but it'll give more of a scoop look.

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Kind of like that, so I might hit some fat and thin shots.

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It causes the face to close really quickly, so I might hit some big poles or pole hooks.

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It can be a frustrating miss pattern.

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So if it's happening late, it's probably because of one of these control elements.

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You need to look at the path, you need to look at the club face and you'll have to solve

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something to close the face earlier and shallow out the path other than standing up.

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The other option when we're looking at early extension is if that early extension is happening

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really early in the downswing, then it's probably more of a power mechanism and it's part

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of how you're creating speed.

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So that early extension move is almost, it's a very powerful back exercise and it's a very

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powerful leg movement.

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But what can happen is if I'm doing too much of this, I'll be kind of applying this

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force early and it will pull me away, so I'm going to have to move my arms in a little

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bit of a steeper fashion.

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So it can get me into a similar pattern as the later one, but usually when I'm working

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on if it's happening early in the downswing, now you're going to look at more sequencing

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and how your body is creating speed and trying to get more of the speed happening from

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your core and your abs instead of from your back and potentially your legs.

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So I think if you break it into these two different categories, it'll be much easier for

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you to solve it.

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If you look at video and you are in pretty good posture right around here, but the club

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is coming down on a steep path or an open face, then there's a very good chance that

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your earlakes extending in order to control contact in the club face or the second version

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would be if you're early extending before this point here and then you have to release

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and the release ends up looking similar, but you did it early that early sign is more

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because of how you're creating power.

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So one quick drill that you could do to work on both aspects of this would be just a little

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half swing drill where you bring it back and you make sure you're in a little bit more

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flex posture than wherever you started.

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So I'm back to my waist height kind of like this.

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I'm going to make sure the club faces square and then from here I'm just going to

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focus on rotating through and trying to make solid contact.

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By doing so, this forced me to close the face a little bit early and to change my sequencing.

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So it addresses two of the big causes.

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This isn't going to work for everybody, but for a lot of golfers, this is going to be

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all you'll need to solve your early extension.

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If you feel like you need more, I've got lots of other videos that relate to sequencing if

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it's more of the power problem or the release and your face to path the relationship if

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it's more of the late in the control path.