The Baptist church in Arthur Lundgren district sits perched on a hill overlooking the sprawling metropolis of Recife, north-east Brazil. It is a little after dawn as the crowd starts to gather and the local residents find themselves spots in the cobbled street and on the narrow pavements outside, squeezing in wherever they can. The air feels warm even at this hour \u2013 it\u2019s the 13th of January, and the middle of the Brazilian summer. The women hang their handbags on the church railings. When the congregation is ready and everyone has found their spot, they all turn to the front and raise their hands to the sky. Then they bend over to touch their toes.<\/p>\n
For almost an hour, the residents of this neighbourhood will stretch, balance, sweat and lunge. It\u2019s hard to spot the instructor through the throng, wedged in as she is between the church wall and a parked mini camper van, her disembodied voice counting down the exercises above and around the crowd. Children, parents, grandparents \u2013 most of them in lycra shorts and trainers \u2013 have gathered today, as they do five days a week, not to pray but to work out.<\/p>\n
This is just one of thousands of classes taking place simultaneously each morning and evening across Brazil. It is part of a bold vision that\u2019s persuaded government officials to invest over a billion US dollars in free, safe access to regular exercise for anyone in almost every city in this, the fifth-largest country in the world.<\/p>\n
With obesity one of the world\u2019s biggest public health crises, policy makers around the world are beginning to realise that exercise might well be the best form of medicine. But it\u2019s a treatment that many people are denied.<\/p>\n