prompt 2

Baku smiles, having been asked to sit down for another one of these interviews. He isn’t sure why people want to know his workout routines, but he’s happy enough to share.

Olubori shares a lot of his training when he was younger was always about getting bigger, stronger. Coming out of the Nigerian community leagues and Swiss junior league, there’s a reason people called him “a linebacker on skates” – he fit the bill. Since coming to North America, his training regiment has shifted focus, especially in Baltimore. Going into the SHL Draft, he was projected as your ideal SHL power forward. Over time, he’s been asked to reshape his body and game to be a premiere offensive center for the resurgent Platoon. That’s led him to have to really prioritize endurance—he’s asked to do it all for the Platoon, and has of late performed admirably centering one of the league’s foremost offensive dynamos, Erik Bergmark.

Early in his career, endurance training took the form of the dreaded Hike Day at the Cassius Darrow hockey camps. Early in the camp, there would be a day only known as Hike. Darrow would lead the group of young players into the mountains near Seattle, with camping backpacks FULL of heavy gear (and sometimes rocks). Then they’d go on a 12 mile hike at a steady jog, stop for lunch, and then hike back. It was brutal, exhausting, and maybe a little dangerous? In any case, Baku survived that and now still adds weight to his cardio sometimes. The extra endurance has done wonders for his skating (aka his biggest weakness coming out of juniors).