Improve Your Follow Through with At-Home Drills

Your follow-through is where you can see whether the club was delivered with structure or with a breakdown. At impact, everything happens too quickly to judge with your eyes, but the follow-through reveals what your body and arms actually did through the strike. This drill trains one of the most important pieces of solid ball striking: arm extension driven by a braced body. If you tend to chicken wing, flip the club, or let your arms collapse after impact, these at-home drills help you build a more connected release and a stronger finish through the ball.

How the Drill Works

This practice centers on two simple ideas: creating a braced body condition and learning how the body swings the arms through the follow-through. Instead of trying to throw the clubhead with your hands, you want your torso to support and extend the arms as the club moves past impact.

One version is the brace extension drill. In this drill, you preset the club in a very closed position and rehearse the feeling of your body pulling the handle and extending the arms through the strike. The goal is to feel the support coming from your glutes and abs, not from arching your lower back. That body brace gives your arms something to extend against.

The second version is the push ball drill. This is an excellent indoor drill because you can do it safely with a soft ball in front of a couch or padded surface. You move into an impact-style position, then push the ball with the clubface using forward shaft lean and body support. If you do it correctly, the ball tends to stay on the face momentarily and launch forward cleanly. If you flip the club or bend your arms, the club slides under the ball and the motion loses structure.

Both drills teach the same pattern: the body keeps moving, the arms keep extending, and the club exits without collapse.

Step-by-Step

1. Set up in a safe indoor space. Stand in front of a couch, bed, or other soft barrier. Use a foam ball or other safe practice ball if you are doing the push ball drill.

2. Start in your normal golf posture. Get into your address position with your usual spine tilt and balance.

3. Preset the club for the brace extension drill. Place the club in a very closed position relative to normal. This exaggerated setup helps you feel how the body supports the release instead of letting the hands roll or flip.

4. Create the braced body condition. As you move into the follow-through, feel your chest turning while your glutes and abs stabilize you. You should feel strong and supported, not loose through the midsection and not arched backward.

5. Extend your arms through the strike. Let the body rotation pull the arms out in front of you. The key is that the arms lengthen because the body is moving and bracing, not because you are reaching independently with your hands.

6. Add the push ball drill. Place the ball in front of the clubface from a mock impact position. From there, push the ball forward while maintaining shaft lean, body support, and arm extension.

7. Watch the ball reaction. If the face and arms stay organized, the ball will feel as if it sticks to the face for a split second before moving forward. If your wrists flip or your arms soften, the club will slide under the ball instead.

8. Repeat in short sets. Do 5 to 10 quality reps at a time, once or twice a day. Frequent, clean rehearsal is better than long sessions with poor mechanics.

What You Should Feel

When this drill is done well, the follow-through should feel stable, extended, and body-driven. You are not trying to slap at the ball with your hands. You are learning how the body carries the club through the strike.

• Pressure in the glutes and abs, not strain in the lower back
• Arms extending after impact rather than folding immediately
• Chest continuing to rotate through the strike
• Shaft lean and face control staying intact as the club moves forward
• A wide follow-through instead of a cramped, pulled-in exit

A good checkpoint is the look of your lead arm after impact. If it stays long and the trail arm extends naturally, you are likely moving in the right direction. If the lead elbow separates and folds early, that is often a sign of a chicken wing pattern or a release that lost body support.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Bending the arms too early, which destroys extension and often leads to a chicken wing
• Flipping the wrists instead of maintaining structure through impact
• Trying to create speed with the hands rather than with body rotation and sequencing
• Arching the lower back instead of feeling the brace in your core and glutes
• Stopping the body and expecting the arms to save the motion
• Rushing through reps without paying attention to the quality of the movement

If the ball does not come off the face cleanly in the push ball drill, do not just push harder. Usually the problem is not effort. It is that the club is losing its structure because your arms are collapsing or your wrists are taking over.

How This Fits Your Swing

This drill improves more than just the look of your finish. It helps you train the relationship between impact and follow-through. A better follow-through usually means the club was delivered with better structure, better body motion, and more efficient extension through the ball.

If you struggle with a chicken wing, this gives you a direct way to rehearse the opposite pattern: width, extension, and continued rotation. If you tend to stall your body and throw the clubhead, this drill teaches you that the body swings the arms, not the other way around. And if your contact is inconsistent, this is one of the simplest ways to improve the quality of your strike without needing to hit full shots.

In the bigger picture, a strong follow-through is not something you add after impact. It is the result of a well-supported motion through the ball. By rehearsing this at home, you build the feel of a swing that keeps moving, keeps extending, and stays organized all the way into the finish.