Freeze your swing just after impact and look at your lead elbow. If it's buckled and pointing behind you — like you're carrying a tray of drinks — that's the chicken wing, and it's costing you more than style points.
Start with the cause, because the elbow is the symptom, not the story. Through the hitting zone, your arms and chest are supposed to travel together: the chest keeps turning toward the target, and that turn gives the arms room to stay long and swing past your body. Keep your chest turning through the ball — that's your follow-through.
The chicken wing is born the instant that partnership breaks. Your chest stalls, but your arms still have all that speed to spend. With the body parked in the way, the lead arm has nowhere to extend — so it folds. The elbow buckles, pulls in, and points skyward. Width collapses, loft gets added at the last moment, and you see those weak fades and pull-shots that feel like they should have gone further.
The early warning sign
Here's the part most golfers miss: the fold usually announces itself before impact ever happens. An arm that's collapsing at the top of the backswing tends to keep collapsing through the ball. What you want up there is a lead arm that stays comfortably straight — firm, never locked. A quick phone clip is enough for CoachVision to check how your lead arm is holding up at the top, which tells you whether the wing starts early or only shows up under speed.
The drill — Towel Under the Arms
This drill rebuilds the arms-and-chest partnership by making separation impossible to ignore.
Take a hand towel and stretch it across your chest, tucking an end under each armpit. Now hit pitch shots — 30 to 50 yards — without letting the towel drop.
The rules are self-enforcing. If your arms run off without your chest, or your chest quits while the arms keep going, the towel falls. To keep it pinned, your torso has to keep rotating through the shot while your arms stay connected to it — which is precisely the move that lets the lead arm stay long instead of folding.
Hit 15 pitch shots with the towel in place. Keep them small and unhurried; this is a connection drill, not a speed drill. Notice how the finish changes — arms extended, chest facing the target, no tray of drinks in sight.
When the towel stays put for fifteen straight pitches, you've rebuilt something real: a swing where the body carries the arms instead of abandoning them. Extension through the ball stops being something you force and starts being the only place your arms can go.