Your definition of "a lap"?

Every coach I have ever had referred to one length as a lap. So that's how I use the word. I think of a lap as one complete coverage of the course. On a track that is all the way around. Once you arrive where you started, you have completed one unit. In a pool once you get to the other wall you have completed one unit. Going back to the start is just re-covering the same ground. At least that's how I've thought about it. But people, and it's almost always people who never swam on a team (at least in my limited experience) insist on referring to a lap as a "down and back" and it just confuses me. Maybe it's one of those regional things. It just seems to me that a "down and back" isn't an actual thing to count. I'd never be able to keep track of where I was if I counted that way But this question has always intrigued me, so I'm interested to see what the forum decrees - I will be ruled by the will of the people on this one

Every coach I have ever had referred to one length as a lap. So that's how I use the word. I think of a lap as one complete coverage of the course. On a track that is all the way around. Once you arrive where you started, you have completed one unit. In a pool once you get to the other wall you have completed one unit. Going back to the start is just re-covering the same ground. At least that's how I've thought about it. But people, and it's almost always people who never swam on a team (at least in my limited experience) insist on referring to a lap as a "down and back" and it just confuses me. Maybe it's one of those regional things. It just seems to me that a "down and back" isn't an actual thing to count. I'd never be able to keep track of where I was if I counted that way But this question has always intrigued me, so I'm interested to see what the forum decrees - I will be ruled by the will of the people on this one