That looks hard, so I can't do it. Will you help me?

Something that I often see are people watching someone else perform an activity.  In a gym, it's a pretty common thing to see.  Very often these people don't attempt to try it due to fear of its difficulty or perspective difficulty.  And very, very often, they don't ask for help.

If your background isn't in exercise and you go into the gym and mainly focus on machines, then you aren't an expert.  So what is it about asking for help, in a gym, that many people struggle with?  If your car breaks, you don't just drive around for awhile until it completely fails, do you?  If you don't know how to wire an electrical socket in your house without lighting it on fire, do you do it anyway?

Now, I know these are examples of more "acute" things, like your car breaking or needing to wire your house, but nonetheless, they are still good examples of needing to ask a professional in that field.  So why do you, if this applies to you, assume that when you walk into a gym or any fitness related activity that you know what you're doing.

Looking at people who exercise regularly, I'd say only about 10% of them truly know what they are doing, especially if they are not employed in the field.  Even then, many of the ones that do know what they are doing don't go it alone.  Sometimes they have a friend or hire a coach to help them.  Very often, this is for motivation or accountability, but still, they do it.  Even amongst professionals, many train with someone.  I train with another at the facility that I'm primarily employed with, most of the time at least.  Honestly, without it I probably wouldn't push as hard or want to push as hard.

In fitness, it seems that there is a stigma with asking for help.  There's nothing wrong with asking for help be it with a specific exercise, program design, nutrition question, or anything really.  Asking for help allows for you to expand your knowledge and sometimes you can make a friend or two in the process. It's not a sign of weakness or stupidity, as I've alluded to before, you ask for help when you don't know how to do something.  And unlike your car or house which often have step by step instructions for you to follow, which are generally reliable, your body is an adaptive machine which can do amazing things.  Very often you don't see or know what those amazing things are.

Asking for help can sometimes be the smartest decision that you make.  Sometimes it's just the validation that you need, other times it's the entire process that you're looking for.  But if you don't ask, you won't know.