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In short
Pick the schedule you can repeat every week.
Match the progression to your experience and read the whole week before you start.
Start from recent numbers, then judge the block by its trend.
Pick a schedule you can repeat
Start with the days and session length you can protect. A famous program is hard to judge if you skip half of it. More days do not make a better plan. A study of trained men found similar strength gains from three and six sessions a week when volume and intensity were matched.
Match the progression to your experience
Still learning the lifts? Choose clear exercises and simple progression. Ask what happens after a good session and after a missed target. If you have run a beginner plan and your workout-to-workout progress has slowed, look at a style with planned changes in load or effort.
Read the whole week
Check where each lift appears, how hard the sets are and how long a session runs. Know the difference between a percentage of a max and an RPE target. An eight-week study of trained men found gains with both. Pick the one you will follow.
Use realistic starting numbers
An old personal best is a poor base. Use recent sets done to a consistent standard. If you use an estimated max, do not rebuild the program around one unusually easy or hard set. Do not test a new max to fill in a form.
What SBD Guru builds
You choose a training style and a schedule. The app builds dated sessions from program templates and calculates the loads from your numbers. The catalog includes Linear Progression for newer lifters and The Bridge for lifters moving into RPE-based loading. Log the real work and judge the block by its trend.