Joe Walden performs a deadlift at the International Powerlifting League national championships earlier in 2016. Walden, 60, of Lawrence is a lecturer in the University of Kansas School of Business.

Raise your hand if your college professor can deadlift more than 400 pounds.

Not many hands?

Unless you’re in Joe Walden’s supply chain management class at the University of Kansas.

Walden, 60, of Lawrence, is an Army veteran and lecturer in KU’s School of Business who’s been powerlifting as a hobby for the past 40 years.

Earlier this month Walden won his third world championship in his age and weight category, at the International Powerlifting League World Powerlifting Championships in Las Vegas.

photo by: Courtesy Photo

Joe Walden performs a deadlift at the International Powerlifting League national championships earlier in 2016. Walden, 60, of Lawrence is a lecturer in the University of Kansas School of Business.

Walden is originally from Tennessee and grew up in North Carolina, he said. He’d wrestled in high school and started powerlifting in college.

“It required way too much dieting to wrestle,” he said. “So I decided to try something different.”

During his 26-year Army career, after which he spent five more years as a contractor, Walden said he spent six years on the armed forces powerlifting team and continued competing as an individual after that.

Walden — who has master’s degrees in logistics, systems management, operational planning and engineering management, according to his KU biography — worked in supply chain management for the Army and applied to teach when he heard the KU School of Business was starting a program.

“That allows me to bring some semi-real world experiences into the classroom,” he said.

He’s currently working on getting his doctorate in education at KU — and still powerlifting.

Joe Walden is pictured with his family after the 2016 International Powerlifting League World Powerlifting Championships in Las Vegas. They are, from left, daughter Amber Burns, daughter Bobbi Walden and wife Kay Walden.

For Walden, powerlifting and KU are family affairs.

His wife Kay Walden — also a KU student, working on her bachelor’s degree in business — lifts. So do his daughters Amber Burns, of Lawrence, and Bobbi Walden, in the Army at Fort Sill, Okla. — both KU graduates.

Walden said powerlifting keeps him in shape, which is “of critical importance” especially as you get older.

Also, he said, he likes the challenge of lifting heavier and heavier weights, and choosing the right way to train for it.

So are there supply chain management lessons to be learned from powerlifting?

They share some basic principles, Walden contends.

“It’s the same dedication required in powerlifting that’s required in business,” he said. “Process selection — picking the right process and doing things the right way — which is really the same thing in powerlifting.”

And if it’s working, keep doing it, Walden said. “I’m a strong believer in, ‘If it’s not broke, don’t break it.'”