Here's the bad news with chronic and repeated ankle sprains. Once a ligament (ligaments keep bones attached to bones) is stretched beyond a certain point, it will not recover it's tightness. This would be the cause of an unstable ankle and therefore why it becomes easier and easier to sprain again.

But there is good news! You can do something to improve it.

Your approach is going to be 3-fold:  1. Strength  2. Joint Awareness  3. Range of motion

1. Strength

The ankle is supported in all directions by muscles/tendons (tendons are the extension and then attachment of the muscle to the bone).  When your ligaments are not doing their job, you need to strengthen your ankle supporting muscles/tendons to a higher level.

Here are a few ankle stability exercises that will benefit not only your ankle strength but the whole leg in various ways.

2. Joint Awareness

This one is difficult to describe, but I will do my best. Right now, without looking at your feet, you know where they are, right? The reason is that all of our joints have special nerves that specifically give the brain information about where your body is in space (without using your vision).

We'll call this "joint awareness". When this is working well, they will scream to your brain that your ankle is turning too far sideways and that your brain needs to tell your muscles to stop the turning! This all happens within microseconds.

Shout-out to our Creator.

The ankle has the highest concentration of these special nerves. And the amazing thing about our bodies as God created them is that we can increase the concentration of them if we provide sufficient challenge to them. It works much like strength training in that when we provide a challenge to them, they respond over time by building up.

Here are some ways to challenge and improve your joint awareness.

3. Range of Motion

The amount of motion into Dorsiflexion (ankle bending up toward your nose) and Plantarflexion (ankle bending down toward the floor) is related to ankle sprains. The more Dorsiflexion, the lower the incidence of sprains. The more Plantarflexion, the higher the incidence of sprains [1].

What can you do? Get more Dorsiflexion! Here's how:

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Go steward your body well!

[1] Wright, I.C., Neptune, R.R., van den Bogert, A.J. and Nigg, B.M., 2000. The influence of foot positioning on ankle sprains. Journal of biomechanics, 33(5), pp. 513-519.