How can You Stop Lifting Up During Your Backswing?

Slicers tend to lift up during their backswing. If you lift up on your backswing, you would have to come down on the steep angle into the ball causing you to slice the ball or lack of distance.

Especially with your driver and woods, lifting up makes it hard to hit it straight or get any kind of distance.

But I'm not going to tell to keep your head steady or try not to lift up because it won't help you cure the real problem.

There are 2 causes to it.

1. Weak Grip

The weaker grip can cause you to lift up during the golf swing. If you have a weak grip, your clubface opens too much during the backswing as you turn away from the target.

And it's very hard to close the clubface from there. By the time you reach impact, the clubface is open causing you to hit the slice.

So slicers unconsciously try not to open their clubface by lifting your body during the backswing. Instead of turning, they lift their head and body on the takeaway because it seems to help prevent your clubface from opening too much.

However, in the process of lifting up, you lose the chance to build up your power. As a result, you lose lots of distance.

You may be able to stop slice this way, but you have to give up distance.

Your Right Shoulder

When you look at pros' impact position, you will notice that their right shoulder is lower than their left.

So when you grip your club, you want your right shoulder to be lower than your left. If you have higher right shoulder at address and lower it at impact, what will happen?

Your clubface will open.

Players with the weak grip almost always have higher right shoulder at address.

So lower your right shoulder before gripping your club. When you grip your left hand, make sure you see 3 knuckles of your left hand.

Make sure you lower your right shoulder before taking the grip with your right hand.

This grip will help you stop lifting up and hit longer and straighter shots.

2. Posture

Another thing that is causing you to lift up is the rounded back at address.

When you have the rounded back at address, it makes it very hard to turn properly. That's why you lift up because you can't turn well on the backswing.

To take the correct posture, do the following:

1. Stand up with your back straight
2. Spread your feet apart about shoulder width
3. Bend from the hips not the waist
4. Hang your hands naturally
5. Flex you knees a bit
6. Clap your hands
7. Lower your right shoulder and grip a club

It's very important that you bend from your hips. If you bend from your waist, you tend to have the rounded back.

Swing Something Heavy

The good drill to help you fix lifting up is to swing something heavy. I recommend using medicine balls (10 to 15 lbs.) for this drill.

Hold your medicine ball in front of you and swing it back and forth. Turn back and forth. You don't need to swing it more than your waist height.

Make sure you turn your upper body instead of lifting it. The medicine ball will make it harder to lift your body as you rotate your upper body and help you cure your problems.

• Lifting Your Club with Arms and Hands during the Backswing
• How to Make a Bigger Turn on the Backswing
• The Hip Slide on the Backswing
• Curing (Stopping) Reverse Pivot with Drills
• Turning of Your Shoulders on the Backswing
• Fixing Over the Top
• How to Stop Coming Over the Top on the downswing
• Fixing a Whiff or Topped Shots