I actually have a relevant story.
My friend, who isn't the best looking guy in the world, and I were at the gym and this girl we'd never seen come in and starts walking around looking at weights and exercise machines.
She was obviously new and looked like she'd needed some help, but we just continued our workout.
Some time later we hear a "Ahhh!" followed by a crashing of weights and look over only to see the new girl dropping a bar bell that was obviously too heavy for her.
My buddy, who's single and been eyeing her for a good few minutes now looks at me, smiles and says "Should I help?". I encourage him. "Go for it man, she'll probably appreciate the help and you might even make a new friend" *Wink wink I tell him.
He goes over and puts the weight back for her as I continue my set. He returns with a really sullen look on his face all of a sudden, so I decide to stay quiet and he quite angrily finish the rest of our workout together. It's really uncomfortable since he's quite chirpy.
When we're done and in the locker room I ask him if he's okay. He says that after helping the girl with the weights he overheard her whispering "What a creep" to herself. I asked my friend if he'd said anything or done anything creepy to her to illicit that kind of response, but he assured me all he did was ask to help her and give her tips on where to start and what to do.
I believed him, because he's a decent guy and I've never known him to be creepy.
He said to me "I bet if I was a good looking guy, she would've been like 'ohhh thank you so much!', but nope. No one is nice to the ugly guy".
That kind really bugged me, because he was a good friend of mine, and even though he wasn't good looking, he has a good heart and I felt like I needed to defend his honour so I went back out into the gym training area and found the girl and kind of told her off about how my friend isn't a creepy guy and the way she conducted herself wasn't very nice, especially to someone who offered to help her.
She blushed heavily and apologized saying she was mortified and she'd had a terrible week. I was still annoyed at her, and told her to save her apologies for my friend so she apologized to him when he came out and they stood around and talked for a bit. He even managed to make her laugh, which made me happy as I felt like any misunderstandings and bad feelings between them would dissipate from this.
He came back with a shit-eating grin, so I asked him what was up. He said he'd managed to score a date with her (her idea), so she can make it up to him. He told me that she'd told him she instantly regretted saying what she did as soon as it left her mouth, and that "She actually seems like a cool girl, I might start helping her at the gym since she signed up just last week".
Well, the date happened, and then again, and again. My friend had really pulled it off, in the same way I pulled off making up this bs story and selling it to you, sucker.
TL;DR How I helped my unattractive male friend get a date at the gym after a bad start.