With regards to rest periods, I usually recommend listening to your body. You don’t want to rest too little OR too long before your next warm-up or workset. Let me elaborate.
I don’t need to explain why resting too little is counterproductive. Common sense.
Now, on to why you should not rest too long.
As you are pyramiding up with sets—sympathetic system is ramping up, aggression/adrenaline is building (yes, even for the ladies), motor patterns are getting greased, focus is building. If you rest too long, all of the aforementioned can start to diminish. Many of you more experienced lifters have experienced this. As you are pyramiding up on a certain exercise, you get interrupted with a conversation. Conversation runs longer than anticipated. You return to your exercise and performance on the subsequent set feels suboptimal, iffy, and not smooth. You might even feel more anxious than if you had not taken that extended break.
When you get to your worksets, performance should feel like how this excerpt from “Developing Sport Expertise” by Damian Farrow describes:
"As all performers know – and the Zen Buddhist teacher Daisetz Suzuki articulated – best execution of skills occurs when there is no interference from consciousness: Thinking is useful in many ways, but there are some occasions when thinking interferes with the work, and you have to leave it behind … It is for this reason that the sword moves where it ought to move and makes the contest end victoriously." —(D. T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture , 1959)
Essentially, motor patterns have been greased so well from the previous warm-up sets (along with the ramping up of aggression/adrenaline, sympathetic system, focus)—and you have not rested too long to lose this—that all you need to do is execute. No overthinking. No mind. Just execute.
Here are some additional excerpts from “Developing Sport Expertise” about choking which is relevant to this topic:
"Other researchers have found that the overall length of the pre-performance routine is unimportant as long as the rhythm of the routine remains consistent. When players did not follow their behavioral routine, performance dropped from 83.8 percent success to 71.4 percent. Interestingly, omitting elements of their usual routine did not degrade performance but adding one or more elements (e.g., taking a deep breath or an extra look at the basket) was associated with a much lower success rate (58.3 percent). So what elements should be included in a pre-performance routine? It is evident that a routine should have at least three functions: helping the performer to (1) regulate their emotions and physiological responses to pressure, (2) deal with potentially distracting external (and internal) information, and (3) execute with a “quiet mind” under pressure.
The focusing and executing steps are clearly directed towards attentional processes: the focusing stage promotes a task-relevant, external focus, whereas the executing step is an attempt to prompt automatic, effortless performance free from conscious interference.
Interestingly, many routines contain ritualized components that have no obvious function and it has been suggested that the mental effort directed towards, for example, counting the number of tennis ball bounces before serving might help dispel any distracting thoughts, cognitive anxiety, or thoughts about the mechanics of skill execution. Other performers incorporate strategies that help swamp the contested mental space that is working memory. The implication of the empirical and anecdotal evidence is that the mental component of a routine should involve conscious effort that helps promote an external focus. This is arguably more important as the physical routine becomes increasingly automated over time.
And another excerpt that explains why pyramiding up with warm-up sets is important:
"For an athlete who wishes to relearn implicitly, the answer may be to carry out many trials using an implicit technique, such as errorless learning, until access to the explicit knowledge components of performance has been suppressed by the implicit ones. Errorless learning results in skills that are implicit because the absence of (motor) mistakes, meaning that the performer does not need to test hypotheses about the best way to move. For example, a basketball player who thinks too much when standing on the free throw line should be encouraged to carry out many throws in which performance is error-free (e.g., perhaps to an oversized hoop or from very close distances that gradually increase). Case studies of the very best netball shooters have shown that this approach results in changes in movement patterns and even characteristic ball trajectories of which they appear to be unaware.
“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones” (Chinese proverb – Confucius). An accompanying benefit of errorless learning is that it allows a very challenging ultimate goal to be achieved by gradual increases in difficulty. Far fewer errors therefore occur than if the very challenging ultimate goal were always practiced. Not only does implicit motor learning occur but, step by step, a performer builds a history of successful experiences. A history of successful experiences is the mainstay of self-efficacy, a performer's sense of whether he or she has what it takes to succeed. In short, completing many trials with few failures increases confidence in one's abilities. Errorless learning is a form of implicit motor learning that has been examined with respect to children. Studies of typically developing children and children with disabilities that cause poor movement skills (such as cerebral palsy or intellectual disability) have shown that an error-reduced learning approach is more effective than an error-prone approach for acquiring fundamental movement skills such as throwing. Not only do they display some of the advantages of implicit motor learning, but an important sense of mastery is encouraged and the children are less inclined to be self-conscious about their abilities relative to other children if few errors occur when they perform.”