The minion wave is the only object in the lane that both players share, and it is the one that decides almost everything else: who can leave, who can recall, who gets ganked, who takes the tower. A player who reads the wave is playing a different game from one who simply farms it.
There are four states. None of them is the good one. Each is a tool with a moment.
What a wave is made of
An undisturbed Summoner's Rift wave is three melee minions and three caster minions. A siege minion, the cannon, joins on set waves, arriving with the third wave at roughly 1:30. Early on a cannon comes every third wave. That accelerates to every second wave after about 14:00, and every wave after 25:00. Waves themselves spawn every 30 seconds, tightening to 25 seconds at 14:00 and 20 seconds at 30:00.
The cannon matters far beyond its gold. It is the single biggest chunk of gold in a wave, which makes it the natural anchor for recall timing, a point the recall timing guide builds on.
Cannon cadence is patch-tuned. Treat the numbers above as the current shape, not as permanent law.
Freeze: hold the wave on your side
A freeze holds the wave near your own tower. You last-hit only, at the last possible second, and you match any extra damage the enemy deals, so that both sides' minions die together and the wave does not drift.
Two conditions have to already be true: the wave must be small, and it must be on your side. You cannot freeze from the middle of a lane. Keep three or four enemy caster minions alive so their wave stays slightly larger than yours and naturally holds toward you.
A freeze starves the enemy of gold and experience, and forces them to overextend past the river to farm at all. It is the correct answer when you want to deny a stronger enemy, when you are setting up a gank, or when you are behind and need to farm safely.
The mistake that breaks more freezes than anything else is minion aggro. Attack the enemy champion, or simply stand too close, and their minions retarget onto you. Minions shooting you are not shooting your wave, the damage balance tips, and the freeze slips. The fix is to step out of range for a moment, let aggro reset onto your own minions, then resume last-hitting.
There is a full treatment in the freezing guide.
Slow push: build one big wave
A slow push kills only the enemy caster minions. Casters carry most of a wave's damage, so removing them while leaving your own melees alive gives your wave a small, compounding numbers edge. Over two or three waves that edge accumulates into one large wave that crashes all at once.
That big crash is the setup for a dive, for tower plates, or for leaving the lane with the enemy pinned.
Get the target selection backwards, killing their melees and leaving their casters, and you have built a slow push for the enemy instead. Their wave now carries the damage edge and it pushes back toward you.
Fast push: clear it and crash it
A fast push uses everything, autos and abilities, to clear the wave quickly and crash it under the enemy tower.
What you are buying is time. A crashed wave pins the enemy laner catching it, which frees you to recall, roam, ward, or contest an objective while losing no farm yourself. Against a laner who is already absent, it denies them the wave outright.
Fast pushing is a purposeful tool, not a default setting. Shoving every wave on reflex is how players end up permanently overextended with no vision.
Crash and bounce: the reset
A wave crashes when it reaches the enemy tower and dies to it. What happens next is the part most players never plan for.
The tower kills the attacking minions, and the defending side's fresh wave arrives with a numbers advantage. Because the surviving wave is deep in the lane it needs more minions to hold its position than it has. So the wave bounces. It slow-pushes back toward whoever crashed it.
The bounce is not a hazard. It is an appointment. It is the single best moment to set up a freeze, or to begin the next slow push, and timing your return to meet it is most of what good recall timing actually is.
Choosing between them
The state you want follows from what you are trying to do:
- Deny the enemy, or stay safe while behind: freeze.
- Set up a dive, take plates, or bank a big crash: slow push.
- Buy a window to recall, roam, or contest something now: fast push.
- Reset the lane and take back control of it: crash, then meet the bounce.
The discriminating variable is usually the clock. A slow push before an objective that is 90 seconds out is correct, because the wave has time to build. The same slow push before an objective 40 seconds out is a mistake. You need priority immediately, so you fast push instead.
That is the real skill, and it is why wave management resists being memorised. The states are simple. Reading which one the moment is asking for is the part that takes reps.
Practise the read, not the definition
Knowing what a freeze is takes a minute. Recognising, in a live game, that this particular wave in this particular situation wants a freeze rather than a shove is a different skill, and it is trained by making the call over and over against positions where the answer is knowable.
That is exactly what Klymo drills: short decision reps built from positions like these, with the reasoning revealed after you commit.