Abstract: Aiming at the rock burst problem caused by the overlying thick and hard roof in gob-side working faces of extra-thick coal seams in the Binchang mining area of Shaanxi Province, we take the ZF1401 working face of Yadian Coal Mine as the engineering background. Surface hydraulic fracturing technology was adopted to pre-split the roof, weakening and modifying the medium–high key stratum located 40～60 m above the coal seam, thereby forming an artificial weak-plane buffer structure above the coal seam. This structure serves to attenuate the transmission of high-level dynamic loads on the one hand, and to reduce the static load below the fractured layer on the other, achieving the goal of reducing rock burst risk and ensuring safe roadway mining. The research results show that after fracturing, the overburden activity intensity, large-energy events in the medium–high thick and hard rock layers, mining-induced disturbance clustering effect, proportion of energy released by rock fracturing, energy per unit advance, weighting intensity and range, and surrounding rock deformation at the ZF1401 working face were all reduced. The rock burst risk was significantly lowered, thereby ensuring the safety of the gob-side working face and the roadways.