An improvement goal in general is getting better, doing more, working harder, developing new skills, learning something new. Some examples of improvement goals are to walk one more minute, do 5 more crunches than the day before, learning a new stroke in your favorite sport or trying out a new piece of exercise equipment.

Improvement goals are not as rigid and general as making a goal to exercise three times a week for 60 minutes each time or setting a short time frame to say, run a marathon. Unless you are already in the habit of exercising very closely to those goals, then you are setting yourself up for failure.