Master Leanne Armstrong on How Taekwondo Helped Save Her Life

It is no exaggeration to say that Taekwondo saved Leanne Armstrong’s life.

In 2019, during what should have been an ordinary training session at Koryo Taekwondo, Leanne felt a pain so sharp it brought her to her knees. She was only warming up, doing sit ups, when a sudden, overwhelming pain radiated through her stomach and liver.

“I could feel the tears in my eyes, so I flipped over so the kids couldn’t see,” she recalls.

Grandmaster Harry Wake and Master Sharon Pounder immediately recognised something was wrong. They lifted her from the floor and took her outside to catch her breath. She assumed it was nothing serious but decided to seek medical advice – and saw her doctor the next day.

What followed would change her life forever.

Leanne first took up Taekwondo to get active, and ease chronic back pain caused by a car accident 13 years earlier. The training helped her regain strength and confidence—and over time she lost 30 kilograms. That decision to walk into the dojang turned out to be one of the most important of her life.

“I just wanted to get fit, I just wanted to get on the move and that’s how it started. Once I got into Taekwondo I loved it,” she says. “If I hadn’t started taekwondo, I probably wouldn’t be stood here right now.”

Convinced the pain was something less severe, Leanne went for scans expecting reassurance.

“I was very sure I thought it was a cyst or a hernia, so when I went for the results my whole life turned upside down.”

Doctors diagnosed her with Neuroendocrine cancer—a rare and complex group of cancers that begin in neuroendocrine cells, the specialist cells found throughout the body that act as sensors and release hormones and hormone like substances to help regulate vital bodily functions.

Neuroendocrine cancer often goes unnoticed, or its symptoms are mistaken for more common conditions. As a result, many people are diagnosed only once the disease has already advanced – and this was true for Leanne. Her scans revealed a primary tumour in her rectum, along with multiple secondary tumours in her liver, meaning her cancer had already reached Stage IV at the time of diagnosis.

“Most people aren’t diagnosed until stage four,” she explains. “And looking back, I realise I’d probably had symptoms for years. I was tired and lethargic; I wasn’t very well but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.”

She was referred urgently to Newcastle’s Centre of Excellence at The Freeman Hospital for further tests and specialist review. Within a week of completing these, treatment had begun.

As frightening as the diagnosis was, the reality of her previous years of training also hit her:

“I thought of how many sparring fights I’d had, how many times I’d been kicked in the liver. If one had gone pop, I could have bled to death.”

Contact training had to stop, but Taekwondo did not leave her life – far from it.

Harry and Sharon encouraged her to keep coming to the club: to talk, to help, to stay part of the Koryo family. Harry’s response was simple:

“He said still come along just to have a chat with our Koryo family unit, and that’s what I did. When the students got something wrong, I’d jump in and help. That’s how I kept my hand in.”

Over time, treatment began to take effect: tumours shrank.

Major surgery followed in 2022: half her liver removed, part of her gallbladder, the primary tumour, and later that same year, half her thyroid.

After major surgery, she was told she wouldn’t be able to train for at least six months. She was back in the dojang in ten weeks.

Daily chemotherapy tablets had become routine, along with monthly injections to maintain bone strength and keep her remaining tumours and related symptoms under control.

“It was different, but I adapted – and I was back in my happy place.”

Throughout her treatment, Leanne continued to train when she could and instruct when she couldn’t. The club gave her structure, purpose, and – on the hardest days – a reason to get off the sofa.

“When I’m at the club, I can’t think about anything else. It clears my head. My passion for Taekwondo is still there. I wanted normality, and Taekwondo was and is my normal.”

Alongside instructing, she also helps with the admin and paperwork that comes with running a British Taekwondo club—a role she was asked to take on so she would always feel part of the team.

She never hid her diagnosis. Instead, she chose openness to break stigma and help others.

“If I can help one person, it’s worth it. I didn’t want cancer to be a secret. I didn’t want to be different. Cancer can be a lonely journey at times, and you don’t know where to go in life, and you think your life’s finished, and you think you can’t do what you used to do. When people think ‘oh cancer, that’s it… life’s over, life’s finished,’ I don’t think it needs to be.”

On the day she was diagnosed, Leanne had just taken her Third Dan. Told she might never grade again, Harry and Sharon encouraged her to keep training for her Fourth Dan – just in case.

And she did.

In December 2021, she graded alongside her son, Rhys; that moment became one of the proudest of her life.

“We agreed we would do it on the same day, it was very special. We had tears. Well, I did.

“And then, my certificate came from the Kukkiwon while I was in hospital after major surgery.

“Rhys agreed he didn’t want his certificate until I got mine, so we all waited for the presentation when I got out of hospital. It was special.”

Six years on from her diagnosis, Leanne booked in her Fifth Dan grading – the one she knew would be her last her- in October 2025.

Despite battling pneumonia and intense fatigue from ongoing treatment, she earned Master status with her family watching on.

“I knew I had one chance.

“I think I put more pressure on myself by saying that, because my mum and dad, and obviously Rhys, could see how much stress and how much pressure I was under and how poorly I was. I wasn’t well.

“I was so tired. I was training three sessions a week then and going to the gym, which was obviously taking it’s toll on my body. I’d started new treatments.

“I’d started chemotherapy, which was a big change to my regime. I’d started bone strength treatment, which was all taking its toll.

“So I said, right, I’ll tell you what. I’ll take my Fifth Dan, but if I don’t pass it, I’m not doing it again.

“I pushed myself to the limit. But I did it.”

Master status earned, Leanne continues to help out at Koryo alongside Harry and Sharon, with her focus now on paving the way for others to follow in her footsteps.

“I’ve said my aim now is to help the kids and adult’s progress. I do train but I will instruct as well, and that would be my aim now – to help give back to Taekwondo what I’ve been given over the years.

“It’s about making a difference and helping them along their Taekwondo journey, whatever shape or form that journey is.”

Today, Leanne receives palliative care – not because her life is ending, but because she is living, and aiming to live well – her treatment continues, with care focused on control rather than cure. Neuroendocrine cancer, once spread, is rarely curable, but with the right expertise and support, it can be lived with.

She attends hospital for scans every three months to monitor slow tumour growth and identify when further intervention may be needed. New treatments on the horizon, alongside her specialist team, continue to bring hope.

Through everything, Taekwondo has remained her anchor.

Leanne now works to instil the mindset that has carried her through her cancer journey into the students at Koryo: to help them understand that limitations do not mean endings.

“You might not be able to do it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it at all, you just can’t do it yet, or you may need to adapt a way of doing it.”

That belief, support and dedication have underpinned Leanne’s life over the past six years. Through her cancer and through Taekwondo, she has carried on her journey with strength and a smile.

“I can’t thank Harry and Sharon enough. If I hadn’t gone training, if they hadn’t kept pushing me, supporting me, I wouldn’t be here. It’s more than friendship; it’s an extended family.”

Leanne knows the road ahead is uncertain. Treatments may change. But for anyone who believes a cancer diagnosis signals the end of life as they know it, Master Leanne Armstrong has this message:

“You may have to adapt or change how you do things and choose what you do according to your limitations, and sometimes that isn’t easy to accept. However, with the right medical team and support network behind you, anything is possible!”