There are some empirical formulas used in the design of rubble mound breakwaters to find the weight of armour layer stone. The effect of wave grouping and spectral shape could not put into these design formulas since their effects are still under question. The influences of wave groups and spectral shape on the stability of rubble mound breakwaters have been investigated by several researchers up to now. However, results were not conclusive in these researches, where different wave grouping and spectral shape parameters were used. This study aims to investigate the influences of wave groups and spectral shape on the stability of rubble mound breakwaters by means of hydraulic model experiments. According to the result of the experiments, the damage to breakwater armour layer is almost same for different spectrum shapes and pronounced wave grouping, under the condition of similar wave statistics. Experiments also indicated that the wave trains with same significant wave height, H1/3, but with different distribution of the heights of extreme waves which were defined as wave heights higher than H1/3 in this study, cause different damage levels. Based on these results, extended experiments were conducted to observe the effect of heights of extreme waves in a wave train on the stability of rubble mound breakwaters. Results of the experiments showed that the higher the extreme waves are, the more destructive the wave train is. By carrying experimental results into design conditions, it was shown that a wave train with high extreme waves may affect the design weight of armour stone. Finally, in order to achieve more practical tools for engineering applications, occurrence probabilities of extreme waves under different spectral shapes were obtained by a numerical simulation. As a result, for different occurrence probabilities of extreme waves under the most widely used spectrums of PM and JONSWAP, necessary weight of armour stone was given in a range comparing with the formu.