Following her divorce, single-mother of three, Melissa Ward, moved back to Armidale in June last year and was astounded there was no one place for sports recovery in the local health region.
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The 31-year-old decided if no one else was going to offer these services, then she would.
Using her own recovery experiences from injuries, aches and pains, Ms Ward opened the Armidale Health & Wellness Centre (AHWC) and now hopes her services can help others in the community.
Opening a few days before Christmas, the centre provides non-medically invasive, and sometimes complementary, sports recovery therapies.
It currently offers hot rock sauna, infrared sauna and red light LED therapy, compression therapy, and hot & cold therapy.
"We basically offer kind of sports recovery based services ... but also just general overarching wellness and health," she said.
"Me personally, I like to use the sauna, because I find that after a gym session using a sauna, my mental health has responded well.
"It's a holistic way of approaching sports recovery and overall health, in non-medically invasive ways."
The therapies are not limited to just people recovering from sports or physical activity, with Ms Ward saying it is for everyone.
"I have a broad spectrum of people that come into the centre," she said. "Yes, we have people as young as 16-years-old, who come in, and they love to sit in the sauna after the gym session.
"Then we also have a large portion of older people who like to come in. Specifically, they like the compression therapy and the hot rock sauna."
Prior to opening the centre, Ms Ward served in the Australian Air Force and was a stay-at-home mum.
She describers her background for opening the centre as "having injuries", not just from her military service, but also from a significant motorbike accident when she was younger.
"The physical toll [being in the defence force] puts on your body, and the past injuries that I had, my background is essentially being broken and finding out what works with recovery and general maintenance," she said.
"I'm sure [people] will probably expect I'm studying sports psychology or something, but no.
"I have a history of just being broken and trying to find effective and also cost effective ways to help with things like that."
Knowing that Armidale has a great sporting culture and is a physically active community, Ms Ward believes there is a want for affordable sports recovery services.
"I know that other [local] places have these facilities, but no one has them to our extent," she said. "I've worked really hard to try and make sure we offer the best facilities, but also, that it is affordable.
"We offer multiple discounts. I'm trying to team up with as many places as I can to offer discounts. We have discounts for Anytime Fitness members, VIA REY members. I'm in talks with SportUNE to try and work something out to offer the students there.
"[No where else local] offers everything that we have, all in one place and at the price that we have."
Though Ms Ward is still putting the finishing touches on the facility, Armidale Health & Wellness Centre is open and welcoming clients at the Armidale Plaza (across from Anytime Fitness).