Many golfers struggle with overswinging, and the root cause is that they start — and continue — the swing with excessive arm movement.
Think of the golf swing like a crescendo. It starts out smooth and slow, then just builds and builds. Whatever you initiate at the beginning tends to intensify and become more exaggerated as you continue.
This is precisely what happens with the arms. Overswingers start swinging their arms back, with the body merely following along passively.
The body is not controlling the movement. It is simply bracing to prevent you from falling over and to allow the arms to swing freely.
You end up with a swing where you never feel properly loaded. No matter how many times your instructor tells you to stop overswinging, you feel like you are only three quarters of the way back, so you keep going because you never feel loaded up at the top of your swing.
How Do You Fix It?
The key is to load your body first, then let the arms follow along with the movement.
Anyone who has worked with Chuck has heard him talk about "big body turn, little arm swing" in the backswing. When you overswing, you are doing the exact opposite.
We are going to fix it by focusing on your lower body.
You are going to teach your body to sequence things correctly. Once you have gone through this process and learned the correct movement, you will actually be unable to overswing.
It Starts With a Twist
The first step is to twist on your trail hip. This is essential.
You are going to start loading the trail glute and trail leg early in the swing. Once you are fully loaded on the trail side, that is your brain's signal to switch directions and start back the other way.
You have heard it a million times: "The swing starts from the ground up." Now you are going to understand how that principle works and how to apply it in your own swing.
As you go back, keep your trail knee in place. You want to feel that you are simply twisting your body on the trail hip.
Of course, your knee will rotate slightly and move outward a small amount, but when you first start practicing you need to exaggerate the feeling and try to keep that leg virtually motionless.
The knee stays still and you just pivot on the hip. You will feel stretching and loading in your glutes and your trail hip.
Do not hurt yourself, but overdo it slightly at first so you can learn which muscles are activating and how the movement should feel.
Loaded Up Already
Once you have twisted as far as you comfortably can, stop and observe your position.
Even from just this point, you will look like you are ready to start back the other direction. You are in a significantly more powerful position than somebody who is just swinging their arms around.
The arm swinger has lost all the flex in the trail leg. That leg just straightens and moves outward, instead of staying in position where you can rotate on top of it.
You want to feel like you are twisting on top of that trail hip.
It is the same sensation you would experience if you lifted your lead foot off the ground and turned your body while standing on just your trail leg.
Go ahead and rotate on one leg and you will get that same stretching, loaded feeling.
That loaded feeling is your cue to reverse direction. Once that side is fully loaded, you physically cannot turn any further.
Now let us look at how the rest of the sequence works.
You can start by forgetting about what your upper body is doing at this point. For one thing, it is probably working reasonably well. For another, it is almost certainly doing too much already — that is part of the problem!
Let your arms and torso take care of themselves for now and just focus on the lower body, because that is what is causing you to overswing.
Forget about your arms. Your first move is to load into the trail glute immediately. That is the very first thing you do in the takeaway.
Forget about what is happening with the club. Loading into the trail glute is your number one priority. To see how your backswing length and loading compare to an elite benchmark, try a free AI swing analysis.
Biomechanically Shorten Your Swing
If you feel like you are fully loaded by the end of the takeaway and you have no other choice but to reverse direction, then you are on the right track.
By the time you get halfway through the backswing, you should not be able to go much further. You have biomechanically shortened your swing while creating a proper load in your body.
The first thing you do is twist on the trail glute, right away. If you keep going to the top, you will feel like you are still twisting that leg into the ground, and there is a limit to how far you can turn. Once you reach that limit, you must go back the other way.
If you do the opposite — just let your arms swing back without loading the trail glute — you will not feel any load, so you will not stop swinging until your shoulders and arms start to feel loaded and you sense that you have some power. By the time you reach that feeling, you are way too far back.
That is the key to the entire overswinging problem: you will keep swinging back until you feel loaded enough — until, subconsciously, you sense power in your swing. If you do not feel loaded, you are going to keep going until you do.
If you stop before you feel loaded, your brain will tell you that you have no power and you need to keep going. That is the problem. We solve this by exaggerating slightly and loading immediately.
What About Keeping the Hips Square?
When you load into the trail glute immediately, you will probably notice that your hips turn a little bit right away as well. That is perfectly fine — all good players do it.
The reason we normally emphasize keeping the hips square is that most golfers allow everything to go back together without building any torque in the swing.
They do not create any separation between the upper and lower body. They do not properly engage the obliques. That is why we usually teach students to keep the hips square.
But for the purposes of this drill, if you are overswinging, you can turn your hips early and pivot on that trail leg. It is fine, because the entire point is to load the lower body early so you can initiate the downswing earlier.
That loading is the piece you are missing when you overswing. You need a cue to tell you when it is time to reverse direction so you can shorten your swing. If you are loading up the trail glute going back, you simply cannot overswing.
It is a straightforward concept. Focus on feeling like you are just pivoting on that trail hip. Load it as firmly as you can. Try to load it right away. Once it feels fully loaded, start going back the other way, and you will find that you simply cannot overswing anymore. For real-time coaching on your backswing and loading mechanics, try a free AI golf lesson.
Watch part 2 now to see how you're moving your body in the opposite direction of the pros!
Overswinging: Doing this (above) feels like this (below)
Twist your body on the right hip
Side view of the twist
It's like turning on one leg
When you overswing, the right hip sticks out (left) instead of being under you (right) where it can support you as you turn
Twist on the right glute, then keep going - you can't overswing
Many golfers turn everything back together - they get no torque
