Linval Joseph: No Bull

[Viktor]

As one glances at Linval Joseph, who is listed by the Vikings at 6-foot-4 and 329 pounds, it’s hard to fathom that he has ever been on the receiving end of bullying.


It’s far easier to imagine Joseph taking what he wants and leaving a wide path in his wake, but few visions could be further from the truth.


Joseph experienced bullying for the first time as a 10-year-old after his family moved from the Virgin Islands to Gainesville, Florida.


“The Virgin Islands is ‘one love.’ Everybody gets along, everybody helps each other, so coming from that world to Gainesville, Florida, going into school, ‘Hey, how you doing? My name is Linval Joseph.’ And somebody told me, ‘You can’t talk to him. He’s not one of us.’


“I was like, ‘What do you mean? He’s a human.’ They were like, ‘No, we don’t talk to him,’ ” Joseph continued. “Now, racism came into play. I didn’t know what any of that stuff was. I had to learn as I grew. Because I talked to them, they didn’t want to accept me because now I’m an alien, now I’m this, now I’m that.”


Each time someone would say something bad about him, Joseph bounced back.


“I used it as fuel, meaning if somebody told me I was poor or had on non-name-brand shoes, I was like, ‘OK, let me go work and get a job so I can buy shoes. Let me help my mom out.’ It forced me to grow up at a very young age.”


Sports provided a transformative activity. Joseph already had enjoyed some success in basketball and track and field when he became more involved with football, learning techniques and trying to become stronger.


“The first time I ever touched a weight, I only benched 135,” Joseph recalled. “I was shaking with it, and they picked on me, ‘You’re too big to be so weak.’


“I went home and did push-ups every single day, 500. It took six hours the first time I tried,” he said. “Every day I got better at it until it was down to an hour, by doing sets of 40, 60, 40, just knocking them out, knocking out 500 a day. My bench went from 135 to 250, 315, 400, 450, 500, and 550 was the most I ever did in high school.”


Along the way to becoming a state champion weightlifter, Joseph wasn’t picked on anymore, but he saw peers hurting other peers. Joseph tried to discourage such behavior and came to understand that the bully’s desire to hurt others originated from a rough home life.


“We’re in the locker room, and he’d take a guy and put his head in the toilet with blue water,” Joseph said. “He was asking me to help. I was like, ‘Bro, why are you doing this? What did he do to you?’


“He was like, ‘Shut up. Why are you taking his side?’