The same people clamoring for radical transparency and getting everyone to open their barns for public viewing are the same ones who seemingly see abuse in the most benign of situations. I’m of the opinion that these people really don’t want anyone doing anything with horses beyond trick training with carrots. 
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Consider that there are those who very much enjoy proper riding and training as well as being adamantly against unethical riding and training.
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Very good question, I was wondering about it as well!
You keep them an even length and then use your body or the lunge whip, to encourage the horse to stretch into the outside rein. When it finds the correct bend/balance, the inside rein will release tension - inside leg to outside rein. Are then an ideal tool? Probably not, but they are useful in small amounts for some situations - a great example is for lunge line lessons.
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I switch up what I lunge in. Side reins, Vienna reins, chambon, super loose neck stretcher. They all work different muscles, do different things.
Watching my new Grundy pony go around with her head and neck way inverted because that’s how she was ridden, I’m already contemplating which one she’s going to go in first, to begin building the correct muscles. She’s 3 so I have a LOT of time to work on getting there.
There’s a place for nearly every tool, even draws. Some have very limited applications, severe cases, whatever. But outside of something that is outright designed to cause pain (bits with points, nosebands with tacks, etc), somewhere there is a place for it - a horse who needs that tool, even for a moment, to bring on a light bulb moment that allows for the tool to be removed.
Eta: in a nutshell - never say never. Horses have a way of humbling you.
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Re: sidereins of equal length on a circle. There are two schools of thought on this.
- Make the inside rein one hole shorter to encourage bend.
- Keep the side reins of equal length because a shorter inside rein doesn’t encourage bend through the body so much as it teaches the horse to tilt the head and brace that side of its jaw, esp. in upward transitions when a horse’s natural tendency is to raise the head. This leads to tension up through the poll and the rest of the neck and even into the rest of the body.
I was originally taught the first technique and used that for some years, but then read something by a biomechanics expert that changed my mind - and actually confirmed what I had been noticing in many horses (a clenched jaw and slight sideways tilt to the head).
Edited to add that the first technique has been around for hundreds of years and my understanding that it is/was used/taught at SRS, Cadre Noir, etc. The second technique is more recent and was based on actual scientific studies of biomechanics.
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I use equal length SR. When Chip the TWH was learned to sort himself to pick up a canter from a walk, we did a lot of work on the longe in side reins. I did this because he was so scrambley that he would scare himself and get upset and me being up there was not going to help. By using body language and the whip, I could encourage him to step under and lift and ask him verbally at just the right time to “pick it UP” … and yes he would put slack in the inside rein and steady on the outside and it helped him sort himself and learn. I did play with a shortened inside rein but yes, he would just lay on it and brace. The bend should come from the body (inside leg to outside rein). It made a huge difference in his learning to have the opportunity to learn without balancing me on his back.
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I haven’t yet watched that entire lunging video posted upthread, but it looked to me like the horse’s nose was slightly in front of the vertical - it was easier to see when the arena side wall was in the background. And I will reiterate that making side reins too long are not helping a horse find and stay in balance or encourage it to shift its balance more to the rear. Instead, they encourage the horse to stay on the forehand and also allow more motion of the bit in the mouth, whereas properly adjusted side reins help stabilize the bit in the mouth.
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When he’s holding his head higher, his face is ahead of the vertical. As he settled into his work, the horse elected to drop his head a little and assume a posture that found his nose on the vertical.
It was hard to grab stills because of the dark horse against a dark background.
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That’s about all I could grab. The last one he’s literally standing still in SR with his face ahead of the vertical.
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One thing that I’m seeing in that video is a rather glaring safety issue: the person longeing appears to have the longe line coiled around her hand. Not a good idea if that IS what I’m seeing.
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Think of not focusing so much on head position, but how the body balances overall.
Once the body is working thru the back to the front, shoulders stable and elevated, neck and head will find their own best spot.
Even on a horse going low and strung out, as the horse balances more on the middle and more then over driving from behind, the more apt the front is to change according to what fits horse best.
Humans are handsy critters and when riding tend to try to use hands more than necessary, when horses are feeling our weight more easily than what we do on their heads.
Until we learn that feel of riding with a horse first, is hard to not still subtly hang on reins, even in the faintest ways.
When looking at a horse longing, some are still expecting a horse to move as if a rider was there and judge as if hands were on the reins, when longing without a rider is a whole different way for a horse to move than with a weight.
Watch long and carefully horses moving around on their own in the pastures, you can see all kinds of things, all ways to move, all head positions, when no one or tack is influencing that horse.
May even see horses putting themselves in deep rollkur positions.
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I can’t see it clearly enough to ascertain as to whether she has the lunge line looped around her hand, but it is in a bit of a sloppy loop. I was taught to keep it neatly bundled up and hold both sides of the bundle in one hand - never with the loop around my hand.
I am not a fan of those side reins because of the donut. The extra weight of the donut makes them bounce too much, so there is a lot of noise going to the horse’s mouth. Not noise in the sense of sound, but rather too much vibration, too much motion, too much chatter.
I also question whether they are too long to do much in the way of encouraging the horse to shift its balance more toward the rear. He does have a nice open throatlatch but I think it may be more beneficial for the side reins to be a bit shorter. Of course, I do not know at what point in the lunging session these photos were taken - perhaps the session had just started and the trainer had not yet shortened them. (I like to start with them a bit long and then shorten them as the horse warms up.)
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What? Never! 
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I signed up for Luke Gingerich’s online thing for a month and wasn’t overly impressed - he doesn’t reeeeeally do a lot of R+, it’s only on top of a boatload of conventional R-/liberty stuff. I really don’t think his horses look happy, lots of pinned ears that get waved away as “thinking faces.” Great timing/effective use of pressure/R- though!
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Did that hat taste good ?
Lawyers client; https://horsesport.com/cuckson-report-1/whistleblowers-dressage-extravaganza-cancelled-after-backlash/
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Not to mention that GB would have likely lost the medals won, as would CD, if the video had come out afterwards, especially if there was information that they suppressed it. I honestly don’t think the result would have been different before or after, but after would have been worse and would have ruined all celebration for the other riders.
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Very much agree, glad GB was given the option for an alternate rider before the Olympics. The best riders should be representing each country and I don’t think CDJ currently fits that bill with these practices anyways. This should be the best of the best.
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