JD Hixson
Running the hills of Montserrat, Catalonia with Donnie Campbell.
JD Hixson is a human performance coach - when performance is defined by simply how you show up in life.
Coaching clients include executives from global corporations, members of certain governments and militaries, those seeking direction, and the creative arts.
He is also a UESCA-certified ultrarunning coach whose approach to endurance is rooted in a lifetime of high-performance discipline, deep listening, and a profoundly humanistic understanding of growth.
Raised in Princeton, New Jersey, JD grew up at the crossroads of nature and academia—shaped as much by the forests and trails of the Northeast as by the intellectual atmosphere that surrounded them. He came of age in Europe, where his identity as a classical musician matured amidst centuries of cultural tradition and a broader sense of the world.
A graduate of The Juilliard School with both master’s and doctoral degrees, JD spent decades performing on the world stage. But beyond the concert hall, he found his true calling in understanding performance as a form of service: offering his skills through community outreach and public engagement projects in New York City’s underserved areas - children cancer hospitals, maximum security psychiatric wards, AIDS and drug-rehab facilities, the homes of hospice patients. These experiences reshaped his view of excellence: not as something to be displayed, but as something to be shared, developed, and lived.
His transition into ultrarunning was a natural extension of this ethos. Endurance, like music, requires discipline, presence, and a capacity to stay open through discomfort. As a coach, JD combines rigorous training science with a deep respect for each athlete’s inner world. His work is informed by mentorship from elite coaches and friends like Paul Tierney, whose insights into mental toughness and emotional regulation have deeply shaped JD’s own coaching philosophy, and Donnie Campbell, whose grounded Scottish pragmatism instilled a love of terrain, patience, and process.
JD’s coaching is practical and personal—tailored not just to the physiology of running but to the human being doing the running. He helps athletes build sustainable, intelligent training plans while cultivating clarity, presence, and resilience that extends far beyond the trail.
For JD, performance, whether in music or in miles, is not about domination. It’s about becoming more fully human.