Originally Posted by
cmynhier
When I started lifting, I started with very short rest periods -- until I hit 150, I was doing 1 minute rest for squats. Then I adjusted my rest period based on whether or not I could do the scheduled work. If I missed a rep, I'd bump up the rest and try again. At the end of LP, I was up to 9 minutes for the heavy stuff (from 285-315). (And once the rest started getting long enough, I'd start warmup sets for bench or press during the rest intervals.)
At this point, I'm just playing it by ear. On light day, I'm managing to do 3x5 on 3 minutes rest. I did 4 minute rest on medium day last week, but that wasn't quite enough, so I'll probably go to 5 minutes. And I'm doing descending rest to match the descending sets on heavy day. As the weights get heavier, though, I may start resting longer between sets.