Joique Bell is the embodiment of commitment.
Only 1.6 per cent of College footballers make it to the pros. Even less high school players do. Only a fraction of the sum total of anyone who’s ever picked up an American football.
And the Detroit Lions running back was never drafted from College either. But he refused to go away.
He had to go through rookie camps and practice squads, shunting rejection because he was hellbent on making it. And it’s easy to see why he did.
NFL teams are still on off-season mode but come the end of June, it’s all business for Joique Bell. In his own words, the summer is when he starts to get the train moving.
“Around the end of June, I fly out to California. I train at a facility there, I’ve been doing it for the past three years, it really works for me,” he explained. “We break off as a team around mid-June, I take a week off, I come back and hit it hardcore for a good month and a half. I come back to Detroit about a week before [pre-season camp] so I can get back adjusted to the eastern time zone and then I’ll report back to camp whenever the day set is.
“From that point on, the train is moving. The train is moving.”
But there’s no point in doing all that work if you’re not going to look after yourself right and the sacrifices Bell makes to get his diet just perfect is absolutely frightening.
“Everybody’s body is different. We take our diet very seriously because you only get out what you put in,” Bell said before continuing with what was a sobering eye-opener. “So I have a lot of hair… I go to this place that make customized vitamin pills for you. I cut off one of my locks and I give it to them and they analyse my hair and tell me exactly everything that my diet is missing and things that I’m lacking. And then they’ll customize packages of vitamins that I have to take daily.”
“Then I do blood work,” he went on. “I take my blood and send it to these scientists and they’ll do a study on my blood and let me know what foods causes my body to inflame, what causes the inflammation on my body, what foods I need to avoid, what food I can eat – everything down from meats, grains, all the way down to spices. Everything that’s good for my body and what’s not good for my body.
“Then I take all that into consideration and pass it onto my nutritionist and I get a meal plan based on the information I’ve given from my food sensitivity test with the scientists. From that point on, that’s kind of the diet I keep myself strictly on. That’s kind of how I base my diet.”
“You don’t stay strict the whole way. When we report back as a team, in April, you kind of get back on it a little bit – just a little bit. When we break in mid-June and I go to train by myself in LA, that’s when I really get strict with it. I might have like one cheat day in the whole month and that cheat day might not be too much either and then from that point on until the season, I try to stay on it.
“But, you know, you have your weak moments during the season. You say, ‘you know what, Thanksgiving’s here, my whole family’s here, I’m going to eat good.’ Eat good, sit down and watch the other games.”
Detroit Lions’ Joique Bell launches Nike NFL Jerseys and Apparel available exclusively at Elverys Intersport along with Mossy Quinn and Jackie Tyrrell.That dedication to eating isn’t a selfish one either. Oh no, Bell looks after his whole offensive line too. They’re the ones who he relies on to clear the path for him after all. And to save his skin.
“I bring them out, every Saturday, every home game,” he said. “Like, for instance, when we were in London last year, we brought our whole offensive line out to STK Steakhouse and me and Reggie (Bush) split the bill – that was like a half a year salary, especially in London. We had dinner there and then every Saturday morning, every home game, I bring in breakfast for the O Line. Make sure you take care of your O Line and they take care of you.”
But Bell can take care of himself. He’s no stranger to wagging his tongue in games but he insists that it’s only reactionary.
“I’m the opposite of Megatron (Calvin Johnson). Megatron’s a very quiet guy, I’m not quiet,” he laughed. “I retaliate… I retaliate. I might not start it but I’ll finish. That’s always kind of been my motto.
“As a running back, they usually take a lot of hits but I don’t take too many hits. I usually like to deliver the hit. Sometimes I go out there, I might headhunt a couple of people. If I’m mad I might not do too much talking because I’ll get a penalty but you can tell by my play if I’m kind of upset with a typical person.”
There’s a tough reputation about the Detroit Lions anyway.
“We’re not going to be bullied. That’s always been a Detroit mentality,” Bell, a native of Michigan, explained. “My team mates come from different areas but it’s always been kind of a tradition, it’s just how we play, it’s who we are. We’re not going to be bullied around. You push us, we push back but we do it within the whistles.”
He does recall an incident with Olivier Vernon of the Dolphins when they played in London. He would’ve got off the hook with it if he didn’t bring it up to Vernon recently, who wasn’t sure who the perpetrator was.
“We had a go at it when we played a little bit,” Bell told. “I kind of pushed him right before the whistle ended and he got up and pushed me after the whistle – it wasn’t a hard push but I flopped really hard and got a penalty, we got another 15 yards. For the rest of the game, he was kind of headhunting me, looking for me the rest of the game and I was kind of expecting it but I think the next time we play each other we’ll have a go at it again.
“But definitely a big linebacker is something I got to be careful of. No, I don’t care, I’ll push anybody.”
Never a dull moment.
