A gyroaveraged Lagrangian is used to describe the motion of a single electron undergoing anomalous Doppler resonance with a wave that has both electrostatic and electromagnetic components, propagating at arbitrary inclination to the magnetic field. It is shown that the flows of parallel and perpendicular energy are oppositely directed, and have magnitudes in the ratio 1+&ohgr;/(&OHgr;/&ggr;):1. The change in perpendicular kinetic energy, or equivalently Larmor radius, is related very simply to theE×Bdrift occurring at Landau resonance. The classical single‐particle description of the anomalous Doppler resonance underlies the existing classical collective descriptions, and is the classical counterpart to the well‐known quantum single‐particle description.