Nope. Not breaking any rules at all; the fitter was looking at the angles and geometry of *your* body on *that* bike. It's actually pretty common for people to put their saddles too high and end up rocking their pelvis, hyperextending their knees, or putting strain on their Achilles tendon through excessive "ankling" (pointing the toe through the bottom of the pedal stroke). It's a sneaky one because the problems from a too-high saddle aren't as easy to relate as the ones from a too-low saddle (IT band pain, etc).

A lot of people think their leg has to be perfectly straight at the bottom of the pedal stroke, and that's not actually true. Your knee needs to have a bit of a bend to it! There are a lot of other factors including the geomtry of your bike (seat tube angle), saddle fore-and-aft position, crank length, whether you are using clip pedals (and how the cleats are positioned)

I'm in the middle of a bike fitting course through work so have been playing with all sorts of measuring tools today - laser levels are fun...

Re: the cowboy vs straddle start - that's just silly. Are we suddenly in the SS/FG forum here?