It's not that FSU basketball players hate Michael Bradley. It's not that they necessarily hate seeing Bradley on a regular basis.

But for a guy who inflicts so much pain -- in such a nice way -- Bradley knows he may not always get a smile and a hug from the FSU players.

"When you see him, you better be ready to work," FSU guard Nate Johnson said. "Because he is going to get it out of you. He's going to get the best out of you whether you want it or not.

"He's not mean about it. It's just you know what he expects and you know what you should be doing and you do it."

Like everything else in Leonard Hamilton's basketball program, Bradley's weightlifting and conditioning regimen is detail-oriented and scripted to deliver results.

But FSU's weight program is almost a radical change from the traditional weighlifting workout.

Players are not asked to "max out" -- or test their strength by lifting as much weight as possible in a certain exercise. Workouts are short and fast-paced. Typically, a player can get through a scheduled lift in less than 20 minutes.

But those 20 minutes are highly competitive and highly productive.

The script calls for a player to work through as many as 10-12 exercises during each workout. But, and this is where Bradley's program differs from so many around the country, players are only asked to do one set at maximum effort. And, typically, that one set consists of no more than 10-12 repetitions.

But the real catch is players are given little, if any, rest between exercises.

So players are asked to complete the entire workout in as little time as possible -- while doing as many repetitions of each exercise as possible. And Bradley is controlling the weight lifted during each exercise and adjusting based on the previous workout's results.

"The best way I can describe this workout is to tell you to do it for just one day," junior forward Anthony Richardson said. "You won't understand it until you do it. It's the toughest thing I've ever done. Unless you do it, you have no idea."

Bradley smiles when he hears players describe the workouts to outsiders. He said it's tough enough to teach incoming players how to prepare for FSU's strength program.

"We talk to kids during the summer, after we sign them, and we try to explain to them what they’re supposed to do," Bradley said. "They all say the same thing, ‘I work so hard,’ and then they come in, and it’s almost always the same response: ‘I thought I was working hard, but now I’ve learned another definition.’

"It’s kind of like we can sit here and describe how hot a stove is, but if you’ve never touched a hot stove, you don’t know how hot a stove is. You think you have a concept. And it’s very similar with strength training. Coached athletes bring this exercise, and they have one concept of training, and that’s what they’ve done. But until you’ve experienced it ..."

Watching the players work out provides a sense of the intensity of the program.

Adam Waleskowski, during a late-summer workout, seemed to breeze from workstation to workstation -- and each lift was done to maximum effort. But, as Bradley charted his results, he proudly noted that Waleskowski had shown significant progress at nearly every workstation.

Not only that, but Waleskowski had completed the workout quicker than his previous effort. Translation: He lifted more weight in a shorter amount of time and with less perceived effort.

"I study motivation, and I think one of the best motivators in human beings is their previous past results," Bradley said. "You’ve gotten results. Your motivation to keep doing something continues. The way we train, we’re always pushing to add weight, add reps, to run faster. You can see that, and so your motivation level improves.

"Everything for us is continuous progression. Of course, kids run into some sticking points and times after a couple years of training but most of our kids don’t come in like that. They see results almost every time they train."

Bradley, who worked with Hamilton at the University of Miami and has also worked at Stanford and at West Point, puts a special emphasis on building off daily successes to help motivate each player.

Every workout is charted on a special software program that allows Bradley to keep up with an individual player throughout his FSU career. He uses that database to project the player's next workout and also to track how players did during times of injury or sickness.

Bradley provides Hamilton with regular updates on each player's progress, but that progress is measured by the average amount of weight a player lifts each workout. The idea is to give a gauge of "total strength" -- a message that Hamilton hammers home in every aspect of his basketball program.

Hamilton said he does not want to see a "weight board" where his team's lifts are recorded. He doesn't care, for example, to compare Waleskowski's results with Richardson's.

"I want an increase, an improvement, but as it relates to this individual," Hamilton said. "A shorter, stocky person might be more effective in lower-body weightlifting things than a long, lanky kid. But that doesn't mean that the weight he's lifting might not be efficient. It might be efficient just for him, because of his body type and what he needs to do."

Hamilton's approach also focuses on the types of exercises players are asked to do.

A special emphasis is placed on ankles and lower backs -- "two problem areas for basketball players," Bradley said -- as well as the knees and shoulders. Bradley said most training is done to put as little stress as possible on joints, especially since players will have their knees and shoulders "pounded" during a typical practice or game.

That's why players rarely -- if ever -- do traditional squats with free weights. Instead, they use machines that lower the amount of pressure exerted on the knees and lower back.

"The game itself beats the hell out of you, as everybody knows," Bradley said. "So we get off our kids’ joints so that most of it’s non-impact."

The roots of this program can be traced all the way back to when Hamilton was an assistant coach more than 30 years ago at Austin Peay.

He said he watched and learned on his first coaching job and continued studying weightlifting programs all over the country. He lifted ideas from West Point and then again at Kentucky, where he also worked as an assistant coach.

While Hamilton freely admits this high intensity program has been around for years, he says he has tailored it to fit his tastes. A bad run of injuries while he was the head coach at Miami finally pushed him into this "hybrid program" -- where Bradley was there to help him turn his ideas into reality.

"When I went to Miami, I had a whole rash of injuries," Hamilton said. "I studied more, and I came to the conclusion that I wanted to have a development program more related to basketball players, and to try to find a way to develop their muscles without putting a lot of pressure and stress on the joints and ligaments.

"So, as I started looking around, I felt that the high-intensity weight-training program was better suited to what I wanted to do as a coach, as opposed to the heavier lifting. I always thought that you could develop muscles that relate to how we play basketball a bit better. To me, there are similarities in both styles. I think what we've done is borrowed things that we're comfortable and put them with things from the high-intensity program."

Bradley said the key to the entire program is simply getting the players to understand what is expected of them. That's why newcomers to the program are given specialized instructions on how to succeed at FSU.

"That initial workout, I have to set the tempo of ‘this is the way we work,’" Bradley said. "Because if you don’t what happens is, if you come in here with a kid and you train too easily his first time, that’s his perception of training, and it may take six months or it may take four years to switch his mind on. So the first thing we understand, right at the beginning, is the difference between ‘fetch’ and ‘sic ‘em.’ You’ve got to know what ‘sic ‘em’ means, and what ‘all out’ means."

Some of the players have learned that the hard way.

"I'm telling you: Go do it and see for yourself," Richardson said. "You will never understand it until you've been through it. It's like a whole different level than what you think weightlifting is."