Legs on shoulders

M/F · Vaginal penetration · Penetrating partner on top

Posed figure

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Keypoint template

ReceivingPenetratingCOCO-17 template · schematic, not to scale

Attributes

Position family: One-on-one
Primary act: Vaginal penetration
Partner arrangement: Penetrating partner on top
Penetration type: Vaginal
Facing: Face to face
Dynamics: Thrusting
Support / surface: Flat surface / bed
Participant count: Two
Composition code: M/F
Source medium: Both
Physical difficulty: Moderate
Prevalence in adult media: Very common
Intensity tier (compliance): Explicit

Common camera framing

Side profilePOV (penetrating)

Description: A missionary deepening: the receiving partner's legs are raised and rested on the penetrating partner's shoulders, tilting the pelvis for a steeper angle.

Variations: One leg up and one down, ankles crossed behind the neck, or legs draped over the elbows (deckchair).

On camera: Side profile reads the raised-leg line; a staple escalation from flat missionary.

AI design considerations: The receiving figure folds at the hips with ankles at the partner's shoulder line — leg-to-shoulder registration is the key detail.

Historical provenance

Where this position appears in historical sex manuals, erotic art & literature · full timeline →

Monkey's AttackChinese (Han dynasty tradition) →
Su Nü Jing (Classic of the Plain Girl) — attributed to the Plain Girl dialogues with the Yellow Emperor · c. 2nd century BCE–2nd century CE; preserved in the Japanese Ishimpō (984 CE)
Legs raised past the shoulders in the Nine Ways.
Wild Horse LeapsChinese (Tang dynasty) →
Dongxuanzi (Master of the Cavern Mystery) — attributed to Li Dongxuan · c. 7th century CE
The second mannerArab–Berber (Maghreb) →
The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight — Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi · 15th century CE
al-Nafzawi's raised-legs congress, ankles at the shoulders.

Generating this position

A starting prompt composed from the catalog vocabulary. Every tag is verified to exist and not be deprecated. Compose across wardrobe, scene and expression in the prompt builder.

Booru-tag checkpoints

1boy, 1girl, hetero, missionary, on_back, legs_up, vaginal, on_bed, boy_on_top

negative: bad_anatomy, bad_hands, censored, monochrome, 2girls, 3girls, 2boys, 3boys

Image to video (Thrust (deep))

long-range reciprocating motion along the body axis, full amplitude, torso following the hips, camera is locked on a tripod and does not move.

Motion only. The still you condition on must already carry the position, wardrobe and scene: restating them causes drift.

Expected figure count: 2. Global pose conditioning does not make a diffusion model count bodies. Count figures and limbs at full size before judging quality, because thumbnails hide the failure. The tag missionary is broader than this position: missionary fixes only that the receiver lies on their back and that the partners face each other; it does not itself fix which partner is above (that is carried by the boy_on_top support). It discards the shoulders as the support point for the raised calves, the pelvic tilt and added depth that are the entire reason for the variation, and the deckchair form with the legs draped over the elbows. No replacement exists: there is no legs_on_shoulders tag, and the permitted vocabulary's only shoulder tags are carrying_over_shoulder, sitting_on_shoulder, grabbed_breast_over_shoulder, butterfly_on_shoulder, standing_on_shoulder, licking_shoulder, standing_on_another's_shoulder and standing_on_another's_shoulders, none of which is legs resting on a partner's shoulders. The support point is therefore unreconstructible from the crosswalk.

Identifiers in other vocabularies

How this position is denoted elsewhere, and what each mapping discards. Full table in the crosswalk.

missionarybroadershared with 5 other positions
missionary fixes only that the receiver lies on their back and that the partners face each other; it does not itself fix which partner is above (that is carried by the boy_on_top support). It discards the shoulders as the support point for the raised calves, the pelvic tilt and added depth that are the entire reason for the variation, and the deckchair form with the legs draped over the elbows. No replacement exists: there is no legs_on_shoulders tag, and the permitted vocabulary's only shoulder tags are carrying_over_shoulder, sitting_on_shoulder, grabbed_breast_over_shoulder, butterfly_on_shoulder, standing_on_shoulder, licking_shoulder, standing_on_another's_shoulder and standing_on_another's_shoulders, none of which is legs resting on a partner's shoulders. The support point is therefore unreconstructible from the crosswalk.
Monkey's AttackcloseSu Nü Jing (Classic of the Plain Girl)
Attested source name. Legs raised past the shoulders in the Nine Ways.
Wild Horse LeapscloseDongxuanzi (Master of the Cavern Mystery)
Attested historical name for this position in the named source; the source wording may describe a variant of the general form.
The second mannercloseThe Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight
Attested source name. al-Nafzawi's raised-legs congress, ankles at the shoulders.

Actions this position admits

The position fixes who is where. These are the beats that are physically possible in it, from the action catalog. Contact through the characteristic beat is intermittent.

Idle / micro-motionPose settleApproachDisrobeCaressKissEntryThrust (shallow)Thrust (deep) (characteristic)Thrust and holdGrind (rocking)RepositionClimax reactionAftermath

Camera moves that suit the geometry: POV (head-mounted), Push in, Arc (partial), Overhead descend.

Also known asdeckchairdeep missionarylegs over shoulders

Related positions

Lotus Mating press Missionary Missionary, legs wrapped Pearly gates Piledriver

Back to Catalog Use in Generator

Part of the Erotic Pose Catalog open dataset · CC BY 4.0 · keypoints are idealised COCO-17 templates.