I often sit like this (though usually with a smaller angle) ever since childhood, so I got curious whether there's a name for it. The internet tells me it's the "W pose," but it seems to me that it looks more like the letter T.
My feet are fully flat on the floor, my knees are together, and my legs form a 90° angle.
My parents called it “W sitting” and I (now 34f, hyper mobile) was definitely NOT allowed to sit like that. I did sit with my knees more apart, like a W. But yeah. Same.
Yes. Hypermobility requires extra strength around the joints to prevent pain down the line. You shouldn’t be putting your joints in stress positions because your tendons can stretch, which will lead to overstretching over time. That’s why hypermobile folks are WAY more prone to injury. It’s why you’ve probably rolled your ankles more times than you can count
If that movement comes from the hip joint it will not harm them knee. It is just a bit rare to have so much inward rotation in the hip joint. But if you do not have top force it and it is comfortable without any need for twist in the knee joint then it will not harm the knee. Some have more movement from hniop inwards, some outwards (very wanted in ballet), most have a bit of both and are somewhere in the middle with their range.
But there is no position that anyone should be in all the time and only. The healthy way is to change positions so that it is nolt always the same joint or muscles getting streched or contracted. So it’d be advisable especially to not spend a lot of time in some extreme positions.
it can be, yeah. just because you can yank your body that way doesn’t mean you should. being hypermobile doesn’t mean ALL the tissue in your body is hypermobile, so doing stuff like this can really piss nerves off because everything around it can stretch but they can’t. i’m sure you would get more wear and tear on the joints as well
it can be hard to understand because if you look at like contortionists or ballet dancers it feels easy to go “but look they can do it and do it on purpose so why shouldn’t we??” but the ones who do that and don’t have a career that burns out young actually do it very carefully, they build muscle, they’re doing things that project their joints and their nerves, we just don’t see the work. like a duck paddling where it’s smooth on top and like insane work below the water surface
(i am also hypermobile so trust me i am saying this from a place of completely understanding of how fun it is to sit in these positions, hell this one with the slightly smaller angle is still something i do a lil too often)
Understood, thank you very much for the advice!
I thought that if I didn't feel any pain or tension while sitting, then everything was fine, but I think it's better for me to pay attention to the postures I sit in, since I don't know exactly how that affects the body.
By this comment alone i am going to assume you are a young person. It will start to hurt. I know it's fun and all that to be thin and super mobile. But please start incorporating some strength training into your life. Not 'get jacked' training, but more like 'teach my muscles to correctly take the load because by the time i'm 40 my joints will start to hurt from being stretched to far for 40 years' training. Please do so, at least at the beginning, with a specialist trainer who understands hypermobility.
I'm 25, so yes, I haven't had to deal with the consequences of sitting in the W-pose yet. I do pole dance at a studio under the supervision of coaches, so I have no issues with training (at the studio I go to, we always do strength training + stretching before we start)
I'm not refering just knees. Everything can start to hurt. Brain is lazy: why spend energy on activating muscles when simply letting the tensons take the load works? But the brain does not think ahead. These strains on tendons and carthilages will wear them down slowly. Learn to activate muscles and develop muscle memory for movements instead on letting the joints take the weight of movements.
Fantastic that you are already doing sports. But you need to approach this from a full body perspective: you need to take care of all your body, not just what you use in your sport. If you already train all your body, then it's excellent that you are starting so young.
Source: someone who, at 30, needed to actively hold their arms 'in' the shoulder joints. Because it was fun, at 15, to impress girls by actively dislocating my shoulders. Not so fun at 25 when i started feeling my arls sliping our. Now, at 40, i'm starting to see the benefits for areas that i started training, and start tu hurt in areas i ignored (out of lack of knowledge)
part of the issue with pissing off nerves is the pain isn’t always acute? but it you do it enough the nerves will get basically angry and then you have issues. i may or may not be in pt for this right now 🙃🙃🙃
Fwiw, you can train specifically for hypermobility. I teach pilates and specialize in hypermobility, but you might be able to find a personal trainer that can teach you. Hypermobility is a very specific issue that requires training differently than the average person, so make sure your trainer knows exactly what they’re doing
also contortionists and gymnasts with a lot of flexibility tend to be young. theres a reason that olympic athletes are usually teenagers. it'll likely hurt them too in 5-10 years, even if it doesn't hurt them yet
this is why i added that other caveat. you are seeing more sports push for longer term health of the athletes — we are seeing more gymnasts continue at older ages, more ballet dancers, etc. olympic gymnasts have moved away from the teenager trend for a while now as more emphasis is placed on muscular strength and less on the old school russian technique
I'm not gonna lie, I haven't seen the Olympics in a while but I'm glad they're making those changes.
I haven't done ballet in about 10 years, but the strength I developed in my ankles is still there. I haven't sprained an ankle in over a decade, and I used to do it constantly when I was younger. other things hurt like hell, but at least my ankles don't lmao
Oh, and to answer the original question - I’m not sure there’s a good name for this because the vast majority of people are unable to do this. At one yoga teacher training I went to (IE, everyone was very flexible), there were ~50 people and only two of us could do this. In the general population it would be far fewer.
maybe not in your 20’s and 30’s but 40+ it’s a recipe for a knee issues. problem is, it’s the accumulation over the years that creates the problems in your 40s plus
It’s literally impossible for anyone to tell - if it’s uncomfortable and especially if you feel any sort of pain in your knees, then probably. It really depends how your hips are arranged. What you’re doing is called internally rotating the hips. If your knees hurt, it means your hips can’t quite move all that way and they’re twisting your knees to get there. That’s a great way to destroy the cartilage in your knees. If it’s kind of not really painful but you also feel more than nothing, I’d try to only do this with a pillow or block or something under your knees.
I can do this pretty comfortably but I’m also hypermobile and perhaps shouldn’t be sitting like that. Depending on if you’re hypermobile or not and what type of hypermobility you have, this might be something to avoid… but it’s certainly not something someone on the internet can tell you. Worth checking with a doctor or physio or kinesiologist etc to learn more about your body and empower yourself to make the best choices for you.
I have joint hypermobility, so these poses don't cause me any discomfort or pain. But I guess it's still better not to overstress my body. And thank you for the advice!
A big thing about hypermobility is that the "party tricks" don't cause you pain until they do. As in it feels fine for years, but over time you stretch out things even more and then when you're older it will catch up to you.
I often talk to my physio to make sure the flex training I do actually targets the correct parts of my body (muscles) instead of making my ligament situation even worse. (Unlike muscles, they don't get stronger with stretching. It's more akin to a rubber band that has been stretched out to the point of not working well anymore, and now can't return to its original form.)
Searching for cues on where you're supposed to feel it also helps - with hypermobility the wrong part of the body might take over the movement. So it feels easy, but you don't actually train anything. Which is both a waste of time and as said above, can lead to more joint pain when you age.
and just adding to that stretching comment, my current physio basically says with hypermobility it can be hard to sometimes feel a healthy stretch. because basically am i safely stretching that muscle or is what i’m feeling actually the straight up pull on that nerve. when you grow up with hypermobility and you learn stretching at a young age it’s hard to know what an actual healthy stretch does feel like. i’m still figuring it out now
(also if you have any good resources on training flexibility with hypermobility i would love it!! i’m basically just hanging out in this sub because i’m hoping to train it in the future — have to calm down the body parts i pissed off first — but i’m also sick of so many physical therapists basically being like “oh you should never again do the splits in your life.” i have a good one now i think but i’m hoping to also do my own research just so i even know what to bring up with her)
They don’t cause pain now, but it doesn’t mean it’s not doing harm. It’s very easy for hypermobile folks to overdo it because it takes A LOT to even make us feel a stretch.
Hypermobile with possible increased femoral anteversion. Only reason I say that is because I'm also hypermobile with increased femoral anteversion and I just had surgery to correct my femurs, as well as hip dysplasia correction surgery.
I could easily sit like this with no pain until I got a bit older and my incorrect joint alignment started to cause me a lot of pain, including a torn labrum.
yikes- I have EDS and excessive internal hip rotation and didn’t know that it could end up requiring surgery to correct. How did the healing process go for you?
The healing process has been going very well for me so far. I'm about 14 weeks out from FDO (femoral derotation osteotomy) and 10 weeks out from PAO (periacetabular osteotomy) and arthroscope to fix my labrum.
To be very transparent, it is a very painful and long recovery for these surgeries since they are very invasive. But I'm really glad I ended up doing it and even though I'm still having surgical pain as I continue to heal, I don't have any of the chronic pain issues in my hip that I was having pre-surgery.
This is definitely something to talk to your primary care doctor about if you're wondering if you could have bone and joint alignment issues. In all reality you could be totally fine, but there is a link between hypermobility and hip dysplasia, which I didn't find out until later in life. I didn't start to have serious pain that affected me everyday until I was 32 years old. I'm 34 now.
And to be fair I was born with hip dysplasia, that was not corrected properly when I was an infant. So my surgery journey started with pain, but if I would have known earlier about my hip dysplasia and femoral anteversion I probably would have gotten the surgery done sooner in life to hopefully possibly avoid all the pre-surgery pain.
And as the person who commented below stated, it is true that surgery can be a lot more complicated for people with hypermobility and connective tissue disorders. So that's definitely something to be very aware of.
If it's something you're wondering about or worrying about I would say the first step would be to get X-rays done to see what your hips look like. That will give you a better idea of what you're dealing with structurally.
the scary thing is, people that are hypermobile have different connective tissue and surgery doesn’t always make it better. In fact it can not heal correctly or you have an increased risk for future issues because the connective tissue is already damaged and the surgery does nothing to fix the root cause/chemistry that caused the hypermobility in the connective tissue.
yeah true- kinda depends on the surgery tho. I’ve heard of people getting bones fused or partially fused and stuff. One of my big concerns with any surgery is nerve damage because I lost full feeling in my chest after getting a double mastectomy. And once couldn’t feel my thumb for two months after cutting out a sticker sheet with metal scissors (nerve pinched/trapped).
I doubt I’d need hip surgery unless an injury happened. I can sit exactly like OP and have done so sometimes since I was a kid. For me it’s not painful at all and makes me feel more comfortable than sitting criss cross usually. My PT says this has to do with the instability in my body where W-sitting creates a wider base. They reccomended modifying to sit on a meditation cushion like this one (picture) if i’ll be on the floor a long time.
Yeah nerve damage is definitely an issue that just comes with the territory of somes surgeries unfortunately. I wish I would have been given more of a heads up about that for my surgeries. My entire anterior / front thigh from just above my knee to my bikini line is numb to anything but pressure. I can't feel light touch sensation or temperature change. It's pretty annoying, especially when I have the feeling of itchiness on my thigh but can't really scratch it because I can't feel the scratching sensation. It's very strange.
How old are you? And who did your surgery if you don’t mind me asking? I failed my hip scope and it turns out the reason could be increased femoral anteversion causing instability. I’m almost 31 and can’t bear the thought of the femoral osteotomy.
I'm 34. I started having chronic, very intense pain that would have me limping sometimes at 32.
I'm in Wisconsin so Dr. Goodspeed did my FDO and Dr. Spiker did my scope, and they both did my PAO together. They did a great job and are some of the best surgeons in their field, which I'm very grateful for.
I'm sorry you had a failed scope. I'm sure that's extremely frustrating and painful. I've seen that a lot over on r/hipdysplasia, people who've had failed scopes because the underlying hip dysplasia or anteversion is what caused the laburm tear.
I was definitely pretty nervous about the surgery. I've never had any surgery before in my life. If it's something that you end up having to do I'm sure you'll do great and heal very well since you are young :)
Do you have children? The biggest thing scaring me about the FDO surgery is that I’m 31 and want to have kids and waiting to be recovered from that surgery seems like a mountain I can’t pass. I’m actually trying to get a joint replacement instead which my doctors think is reasonable given my goals and desire to avoid a long recovery, but my insurance company doesn’t cover joint replacements for this reason but apparently others do. :(
It's called, "you'll regret tf out of this when you're having knee replacements at 50". My mother, myself, and both my daughters have hypomobility. My mom has had 8 surgeries at this point on her joints, and it'll be my turn to get started soon. STOP IT, fren.
In reality, I am truly grateful for the advice. Before this post, I generally didn't realize that this could be dangerous and damage joints this badly. I'm 25 now, so earlier it seemed to me that if nothing hurts right now, then everything is fine. But it looks like I'd better reconsider my habits when it comes to choosing a sitting position
Good, I'm so glad! You can also speak to a physical therapist, they have tons of suggestions, like they had me build my quads to help protect my knees.
So interesting! I do it all the time, but have tried to reduce the habit since I’m not far off the age where my knees finally seek vengeance. Even us anime girls must retire eventually
This is often referred to as the “w sit.” It can be dangerous, especially as you age, because it puts a lot of pressure on your knees. Most people who do this as adults started as children. For those who have always been doing this, it’s less dangerous than if someone is trying to “learn” to sit like this. It should generally be discouraged in children because it can have physical developmental consequences.
Overall, if you’re able to sit comfortably in other postions (like crisscross applesauce, kneeling, etc.), you should. It’s just not an ideal way to sit, and there’s safer options.
it used to have a kinda racist name in the US and then in like preschool they would do “criss cross applesauce” and everyone i know just started using that to avoid the racist name. i lowkey kinda love it
(crossed legs for us i feel implies more when you’re sitting in a chair and cross one leg over the other)
Your femurs may be backwards in the sockets. I have unreal flexibility in the opposite direction. Didn’t find out I had weird femurs until a couple years ago and I’m in my late 30s. There’s nothing to worry about, but maybe go get an X-ray to see if it’s the same thing.
I don’t think there is a specific name for this pose but it’s called the W-pose at a lesser angle like you mentioned. It’s quite common in Japan since you have to sit on the floor a lot more often and it’s generally more comfortable than sitting on your feet which is seen at the most polite seating position(正座).
The W-pose also has a lot of other names in Japan: duck pose(アヒル座り), girl pose(女子座り), flat pose(ぺたんこ座り) in Japan. If it feels natural to you, I don’t think it’s dangerous to do it sparingly but for longer periods, it can cause a lot of pressure on your knees.
I myself, also find it comfortable so I do this from time to time when shifting positions but try to avoid long stretches of time in it.
I do this too! After reading some of the answers here I'll definitely have to learn more abt femoral anteversion and hypermobility 😳 Curious, do you have troube sittung criss cross?
Cool to know that there are people who can do that too :)
No, I don't have any issues with sitting criss-cross.
My knees comfortably go down as low as possible (as far as possible in this position) and there's no discomfort at all
Reading the comments I've just realized, I've been sitting like this my whole life and now started to notice knee pain. And looking back, yes it seems I'm hypermobile. Oh dear
It’s called a “W” sit and a lot of people like to use it because it allows you a stable base to reach from without having to use core muscles. Unfortunately it really taxes your hip flexors and eventually will cause pain and damage.
Would recommend stopping, I did this and other crazy stuff growing up and later found out I was hypermobile, and now struggle with joint pain especially in the knees and hips. Strength training I've heard helps ❤️
After reading all the comments and how dangerous this is for your knees. And being flexible myself, here I am in my 50s sitting on the floor trying to see if I can do it. I could not get my knees to the floor and even the attempt I could feel the pressure on my knee joints. If I tried to push my knees to the floor, it would be painful and probably breaking ligaments.
I'm used to sitting like this, and it doesn't cause me any pain.
But, as I was told in the comments, if I keep doing this, I could seriously harm my health
I tried it. In practice, it feels like a lighter version of how I usually sit, although not as comfortable because of the heels stretched out along the body
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u/Different-Eagle-612 4d ago
it’s called “you’re hypermobile and probably shouldn’t be sitting like that“