For Some, Crossed Legs Are Posture-Perfect

It’s the posture preferred by short-skirt wearers, some leg men and tired desk-bound workers.

And now, crossing the legs has gotten a thumbs up from orthopedic experts who say that the posture is “physiologically valuable.”

“Look around, almost everybody crosses their legs,” says Chris J. Snijders, professor of biomedical physics and technology at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

He and his research team wondered if leg-crossing, which is so common, has any beneficial effects. So they rounded up 15 healthy men and women and applied electrodes to their stomach and back muscles to measure activity in various postures.

They found that leg-crossing--either upper legs crossed or one ankle on the opposite knee--decreases the activity of the oblique abdominal muscles, which help rotate the spine and are active when you sit with both feet on the floor. The crossed-leg posture also stabilizes the sacroiliac joint in the lower back.

“Leg-crossing is functional for people without back pain,” Snijders says, “because it is less fatiguing than sitting with both feet on the floor.”

Workers should be able to easily cross their legs on the job, the researchers conclude in a report published recently in the journal Spine. (Don’t wait for a specially designed desk to show up at an office-supply store near you, says Frank Bernard of Bernard’s Office Furniture in Encino. His solution: “Use a lower chair.”)

But crossed legs isn’t a good posture for everyone, which Snijders and his colleagues recognize.

Dr. Allen Bursk, an orthopedic surgeon at Orthopaedic Hospital in Los Angeles, tells his back-pain patients not to sit with crossed legs because it puts tension on the sciatic nerve, the large nerve of the leg. “If you have a back problem or sciatica, this will aggravate it.”

And what about the old wives’ tale that crossing the legs will lead to--or worsen--varicose veins?

“If you cross your legs, it’s not a big deal,” says Dr. Gabriel Goren, an Encino vascular surgeon. What should be avoided, he says, is prolonged sitting without breaks, whatever the posture.

The upper-legs-crossed posture is not considered ideal for peddling hosiery, either.

“The thing you strive for is to make [the legs] look as sexy and appealing as possible,” says Karen Bromley, spokeswoman for Evan-Picone Legwear. “You go for the longer leg look.”

The most likely postures to achieve that? Either the demure one ankle behind the other or legs crossed at the calf.

“Your leg doesn’t look as sexy when one is crossed over the other,” Bromley says, “at least not for an ad.”