Thinkstock photosWearing high heels, sleeping on your stomach and wearing just one strap of a backpack are all common things we do that might not be so great for our posture. “Stand up straight” isn’t good enough advice anymore.

Having good posture has many benefits, including reduced injury risk, better balance and fewer aches and pains.

Posture is greatly influenced by such things as wearing the right footwear, maintaining a healthy weight … and even things like bone density, or the way we breathe. Something as simple as taking in a long, deep breath can improve posture and elevate mood.

Look to these solutions for better posture:

Shoes

Wearing high-heeled shoes throws off a woman’s center of gravity. This causes your body to lean forward, and to compensate, to lean backward and overarch the back, putting strain on the hips, knees and lumbar spine. Regularly wearing heels also shortens the calf and back muscles, compounding postural issues. Look for shoes with low heels and a wide heel base to help distribute weight more evenly.

Bikes

If you enjoy biking, make sure that your seat and handlebars are adjusted correctly. Seat position should be level and handlebar positioning determined by height, strength, coordination and functional goals. If handlebars are too low or too far forward, rounding of the back can occur, resulting in strain.

Bones

Osteoporosis and osteopenia are conditions of low bone density that can affect posture. About 85 to 90 percent of adult bone mass is acquired by age 18 in girls and 20 in boys. Children today on average are much less active than in past generations. Studies with ages 8 through adolescence and young adulthood have shown that high-intensity, short-duration exercise appears to elicit the greatest bone density increase.

Exercises

To build strength and bone mass at any age, both weight-bearing and resistance training exercises are ideal. Weight-bearing exercises are those that require the bones to fully support your weight against gravity. Examples are walking, jogging, stair climbing, dancing, or using an elliptical machine. Nonweight-bearing exercises include biking, swimming, water aerobics and rowing. Weight-bearing activities such as walking as little as three times a week can benefit the bones.

Yoga and Pilates are wonderful for improving posture, gently strengthening and stretching the muscles needed for spinal alignment. Seek an experienced instructor and let he or she know of any existing problems.

Muscles

Keep the abdominals and low back muscles strong. This doesn’t mean that you have to do hundreds of sit-ups; instead, you can start by learning how to contract these areas. An example of contracting the low back is to lie face down with arms at your sides or above your head, and while maintaining a neutral spine, slowly and gently lift the shoulders from the floor.

A simple way to strengthen and feel the deep abdominal muscles contract is to place the fingertips just beneath the ribcage and then fully exhale.

Ab wheels

Other ways to keep the abs and low back strong are to incorporate stability ball exercises, or by using an ‘ab wheel,’ a product designed to roll with you as you push and pull your own body weight.

“Ab Wheel Workouts” by Karl Knopf is a recommended fitness guide for anyone unfamiliar with how to use an ab wheel, or for seasoned exercisers who want to take their strength to the next level. Packed with clearly illustrated and explained exercises and six progressive training programs from beginner to advanced, ”Ab Wheel Workouts” shows how to stretch and strengthen the core, improve posture, and includes moves to tone the legs and upper body.

Hips

Lower-back problems and postural changes can stem from hip instability, weakness or inflexibility. When the muscles that work to move and support the hip joint become too tight or too loose, lack of stability occurs, putting greater stress on other areas, which learn to overcompensate.

You can practice using the hips correctly in everyday movements such as climbing stairs, lifting a light object from the floor, or simply sitting and standing from a chair. Think about looking straight ahead, keeping the chest elevated and avoid rounding or shrugging the shoulders, or rounding the back. Each time you use the hips correctly, you help to create and reinforce proper spinal alignment.

Observance

People-watching can help us to be more mindful of our own posture. A person who is feeling confident and happy, for example, is likely to walk briskly with head up, chest out and spine in alignment, while a depressed person’s pace is often slowed, with the head, shoulders and back rounded forward.

Pay attention to how your posture changes while sitting or standing, such as crossing the legs, putting more weight on one leg than the other, or moving the upper body forward while on the computer. If possible, have a professional assess your walking or running gait, or have a friend videotape you; the results can be a real eye-opener.

Sleep

Stay on your back: Experts don’t recommend sleeping on your stomach, as this can cause the neck to be placed in an awkward, overly extended position, and it also flattens the natural low back curve, increasing strain.

Backpacks

Changes in posture can begin at an early age. When a child’s backpack is overloaded, for example, excessive forward tilting of the head often occurs. The further forward the head falls, the less supported the neck is by the vertebrae and the higher incidence of overstretching. When this happens, muscles, tendons and ligaments overwork and become both tighter and weaker.

Arching the back, bending too far forward or leaning to one side also increases injury risk. The result is spinal misalignment, which hampers functioning of the disks that provide shock absorption. Be sure that your child’s backpack is appropriate for his or her size so that it won’t be too heavy, and ensure that weight is evenly distributed by reminding him or her to wear both shoulder straps.

Using single-strap backpacks or just one strap of two creates a situation where one side of the body must overwork. By wearing two shoulder straps, the load is better distributed, which helps to lessen stress on the spinal column and keep it better aligned. Studies show that problems are magnified when the weight of the backpack is greater than 15 percent of bodyweight.