When wearing my tall insulated rubber boots with heavy insulated coverall pants over them, I still do this even after 6 years running this tractor. With regular ankle boots i sense my leg touching the lever before it tilts the bucket down. Or forks.
The loader lever is totally shined up by constant leg/boot contact, right at the lowest bend before dissappearing below the deck.
Earlier days when I was welding more I would have tried fabbing a different shaped lever rod with an inch or 2 more legroom there.