Stroke Rate Calculator

Stroke Rate is strokes per minute, calculated purely from how many strokes you took and how long that took -- it's a measure of your arm-cycle tempo, not distance covered. Two swimmers with identical stroke counts and identical times will have identical stroke rates whether they swam a 25-meter or 50-meter pool, which is why Pool Length only enters the Distance per Stroke and related distance-based calculations.

SWOLF varies by pool length, stroke, and swimmer level, so there's no single universal target -- it's most useful for tracking your own improvement over time in the same pool and stroke, where a lower score consistently means you're covering the length with a better combination of speed and stroke economy than before.

Taking more strokes to cover the same length in the same time raises your Stroke Rate but lowers your Distance per Stroke, and since Stroke Index multiplies the two together, more strokes alone doesn't necessarily improve efficiency -- if you're not also going faster, adding strokes just means more effort for the same result, which SWOLF and Stroke Index are both designed to expose.

Swim Speed is your raw velocity in meters per second, calculated from Pool Length divided by Time per Length, while Pace per 100m converts that same speed into the more familiar "time to swim 100 meters" format competitive swimmers typically use to compare performances -- the two describe the same underlying speed, just in different units.

Not directly -- Stroke Index is most meaningful when comparing swims of the same stroke type in the same pool length, since different strokes (freestyle vs. breaststroke) have inherently different efficient stroke rates and distances per stroke, and a longer pool naturally allows more distance to accumulate per stroke than a shorter one.