Quantitative approach aka “noob gains” stops working fairly quickly even with athletic training
"Noob gains" doesn't have anything to do with setting goals or quantitatively measuring progress. It refers to the speed at which unadapted athletes are able to progress (e.g. add weight to the bar, run farther) each workout when they first start training, compared to athletes who have been training longer, are more adapted, and progress slower.
Most professional and highly adapted athletes are extremely quantitative about their training programs, much more so at the advanced stages than in the early stages. They just progress much slower because it takes more training for their bodies to continue adapting.
If I was training for a marathon I would set numerical goals for how much I would run a week coming into it. If I am recovering from an injury that's even more the case.
Lately my son and I have been learning a martial arts form that has about 80 steps in it. There is a lot new about it for us: I've never done a two-person form or a weapons form before, and he's never trained in a form at all. You learn this kind of thing by breaking it up into pieces: so we have a burndown chart on the wall for it, which I think is a good motivation.