This updated edition contains additional material, including a ground-breaking chapter on the life-changing benefits of a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, and a fascinating explanation of why the Springboks did not win the 2011 Rugby World Cup!

Tim Noakes is the world’s leading authority on the science behind sport. Through a lifetime of research, he has developed key scientific concepts in sport that have not only redefined the way elite athletes and teams approach their professions, but challenged conventional global thinking in these areas.

In this new and updated edition of Challenging Beliefs, Noakes gives his views on everything from overtraining, banned substances and the dangers of rugby to the sports-drink industry, and children and sport, debunking a few sporting myths in the process. Stories and case studies of the teams and athletes with whom he has worked are also included. In providing an intimate look at the golden threads running through Noakes’s life and career, this truly fascinating book reveals the groundbreaking theories and principles generated by one of the greatest minds in the history of sports science.

TIM NOAKES is the Discovery Health professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town (UCT), as well as co-founder and director of the Medical Research Council/UCT Research Unit for Exercise Science and Sports Medicine at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa. In 2002 he received a doctor of science degree from UCT for seminal research findings in the exercise sciences. Noakes is one of the 22 founding members of the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Science Academy and is a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine. A veteran of over 70 marathons and ultramarathons, Noakes is the author of the award-winning Lore of Running.

MICHAEL VLISMAS is an independent sports journalist and broadcaster who works in both the South African and the international arena. Having begun his career as a general sports reporter at the Pretoria News, he now owns his own sports media agency that covers a variety of sports but specializes in golf. The golf correspondent for the Sunday Times and City Press in South Africa, he writes a weekly golf column for the Pretoria News and is the Africa golf correspondent for the American publication Global Golf Post. He is also editor of the South African golf publication Tee to Green. He is co-author of Don’t Choke: A Champion’s Guide to Winning Under Pressure, which he wrote with Gary Player.