Is swimming measured in meters or yards?
In USA Swimming competitions, swimmers compete in yards during the school year and meters in the summer. Most casual and recreational swim teams only swim yards.
One yard is equivalent to 1.0936 meters, thus 50 yards is exactly equivalent to 45.72 meters.
If you're swimming in an Olympic pool (50 meters long), a metric mile is equal to 30 laps. If you're swimming in a short-course pool (25 meters long) a metric mile is equal to 60 laps. If you're swimming in a 25-yard pool, a metric mile is 66 laps.
Most American pools are 25 yards in length and are known as short course yards pools or SCY.
For a swimming pool, cubic meters or yards would be an appropriate unit. In metric units, there are 100 centimeters in a meter and so 100^3 = 1 \times 10^6 cubic centimeters in a cubic meter.
In the United States, the term "short course" is more commonly applied to 25 yards (22.86 m) competition, which is more common in that country. Short course yards is generally abbreviated as "SCY" to differentiate it from short course meters (SCM).
Race results from a short course meter pool (SCM) are faster than from a long course meter pool (LCM). The turn makes a difference whether the pool is meters or yards. A short course pool performance will be faster than a long course pool performance at any championship level meet, and at almost all other meets, too.
A yard and a meter are roughly equivalent, although a meter is slightly larger. A meter is 1.09361 yards, or 1 yard and 0.28 in.
Probably the most common option for swimmers is to count laps by each lap/length that you swim. Remember again that going down one way is a lap, and coming back is a second lap. This works best if you're trying to get the total number of laps you swam during a workout.
Race results from a short course meter pool (SCM) are faster than from a long course meter pool (LCM). The turn makes a difference whether the pool is meters or yards. A short course pool performance will be faster than a long course pool performance at any championship level meet, and at almost all other meets, too.
Which is longer 50 meters or 50 yards?
A meter is 39.37 inches; a yard is only 36 inches. Since a meter is 3.37 inches longer than a yard. 50 meters is (50 X 3.37) inches longer than 50 yards. That's 168.50 inches longer, or 4.68 yards longer than 50 yards.
Meters and yards may seem like similar lengths to those outside of the competitive swimming world, but swimmers consider them to be very different. 25 meter long pools are slightly longer than 25 yard pools and are primarily used in international competitions.
