On any Sunday afternoon, players from the Southeast Missouri State football team can be found in the Success Center with their new strength and conditioning coach, Justin Guy.

Guy leads them through their workout routine and can be seen making a few jokes or wisecracks with players throughout warm ups, lifting and especially when everything is winding down.

Guy said that he has been impressed with each and every player thus far and that they've been receptive and accepting of his methods.

"I've literally ran the crap out of them the entire summer," Guy said. "They thought I was just doing it to be mean, but I was actually doing it for a reason and it's showing -- against Mizzou in the fourth quarter, it didn't look like the fourth quarter anymore. They were still running hard, hitting hard and everything. I don't want to necessarily pick out individuals -- everyone since I've been here has just been hands down more than grateful."

Guy spent eight months with Missouri athletics as an intern from working with the football team, swimming team, wrestling team, the cross country and track and field teams.

He primarily spent time working with the teams in warm ups, workouts and conditioning, which is his job now at Southeast.

"They kind of saw me as more than an intern [at Missouri], I was kind of in charge of the interns when I was there," Guy said. "Pretty much, I only know Mizzou strength and conditioning. ... They develop the best strength and conditioning coaches, in my opinion. So I mean here, since all I know is what Mizzou does, and since obviously they're successful, I've just implemented the same things."

Guy was hired to join the strength and conditioning department in January, and when Southeast coach Tom Matukewicz first met Guy, he said that he was surprised by his stature.

"When Coach Guy first came to my office, I almost wanted to drink cyanide because he's so little, but now I love it and he's earned everyone's respect," Matukewicz said. "But the last thing I wanted was a little strength coach, but he commands the room and does a great job."

Matukewicz wanted Guy to be the team's strength and conditioning coach because of his background at Missouri.

During the offseason before Southeast started their workouts, Matukewicz and Guy talked about expectations and the culture of Southeast football.

Matukewicz even took Guy with him to a coaching clinic on Feb. 7 in St. Louis to hear him talk about how he and the rest of the coaching staff run the team.

"I told him to take his Mizzou workout, scribble 'Mizzou' out and put 'SEMO' on it until we get going a little bit," Matukewicz said. "He started doing a great job and [I] just let him have a lot more freedom with the team. The team really was feeling great about what was happening, and so he just kind of took it on his own from there."

Matukewicz and Guy collaborated to try and find a way to motivate the players in their workouts, and they came up with what they call "standards."

The standard is the average performance of fellow Football Championship Subdivision player's who have competed in the NFL Combine, and the Southeast players compare their numbers to the average of the postion they play.

"Whether its bench, squat, hang clean, vert[ical], broad [jump], 40-[yard dashes], L drill, pro agility -- we target everything. When you give them the standard, give them a concrete number -- it's an extrinsic motivational factor to get them there," Guy said. "The guys are like, 'All right, I'm here. So I've got to bust my butt to get to where Coach Tuke and I need you to be.'"

Junior strong safety Eriq Moore complemented the program by saying it was great that he could compare his numbers to safeties that have competed in the NFL Combine.

"Out of all of those squat numbers, I think the squat's like 415, now I compare my squat to their squat," Moore said. "Same with the 40-[yard dash], same with vertical [jump], same with max bench-press -- all of that -- 225 reps, a lot of that combine stuff and we compare ourselves to that and put ourselves to a higher standard."

Moore and other players like sophomore strong safety Josh Kinzer rave about Guy's methods and said that he is the reason they have been healthy this year.

"Coach Guy is a great guy, a great coach," Moore said. "[Guy] came over and he's getting us right, getting us stronger. The first day we were out there half of our team -- we were kind of a little culture shocked. We're all tired and some guys are throwing up, so I guess if it's no pain, no gain. So we were definitely in pain, so we know we got better."

Another factor that keeps the players motivated is that Guy keeps track of each of their personal records in the various workouts.

"The PR board is a kind of a unique situation where each position, if you had the best squat number, you're up on the board," Guy said. "I wanted to create an environment that is contagious and that the guys thrived off of versus, 'I have to go into the weight room and do another one of Coach Guy's workouts.' I wanted to make it fun because they were seeing results and it was being shown on the field."