The instinct is to keep rest short to feel like you worked hard. For building strength and size, that instinct is usually wrong.
- Strength / heavy compounds: 3–5 minutes. Your nervous system needs it to move real load.
- Hypertrophy / accessories: 1.5–3 minutes. Enough to repeat quality reps, short enough to keep density.
- Conditioning finishers: 30–60 seconds, on purpose.
If your next set collapses in reps, you rested too little — not too much.