‘I would have studied while I showered’: A Foucauldian reading of how young student-athletes regulate their free time

Achieving athletic and educational goals, maintaining well-being, and leading a ‘balanced’ private life are key ambitions promoted in dual career policy. Yet, for young student-athletes, these holistic intentions are blurred by demands to train more, recover efficiently, and remain academically competitive. Drawing on Foucault's concept of power/knowledge and focus-group interviews with 25 student-athletes (aged 15–16), we examine the forms of knowledge through which young student-athletes regulate their free time. Our analysis shows that student-athletes predominantly reproduce dual career discourses that position time efficiency as an ethical solution to balancing sport and school. For those acting upon bio-scientific expertise about recovery, balance was achieved through reduction rather than redistribution, either by lowering educational expectations or by eliminating activities deemed wasteful. At the same time, health introduced alternative power/knowledge relations that could legitimise small acts of disruption. We argue that opportunities for such disruption easily become unequally distributed, shaped by institutional legitimation, talent status, and access to credible rationales. These findings raise questions about what version of the young athlete dual career policy helps to produce – and at what cost.