Mike Montgomery is pushing at the boundaries of the dirt jump corral once again trying to go bigger, higher and even wild-er than anyone else before him.

Checkout his new trick the “Cliff Hanger Backflip”, how long before Mike lands this on dirt?

Read the interview with Mike below to find out how he went about learning the trick.

(Thanks to Greg at Straitline for the heads up)

http://mpora.com/videos/D9hhtjwPK
MPORA Action Sports >>

Can you talk us through how you go about a trick like that?

Well that’s a great question because I don’t fully know how it works exactly. But I did figure out that the secret is when your fully extended and start to come back to the bike you actually pull your legs in faster than you bring your hands down to the bars. You do this to fling the bars to your hands that way your feet can find the pedals faster and set up to land. If you do the trick and not extend the cliff-hanger so it looks like you’re just hunched over this key part of the trick doesn’t apply because you still so close to the bike.

It looks like you’ve got to be super precise with feet/hands/bars being in the right place in the split seconds you get to execute the trick?

For sure there is such a fine window to set up throw the trick and try to. If you don’t set up just right your feet turn the bars and there is no coming back from that one, you wasted a foam jump and are buried which isn’t cool or you just sent yourself to flat and that is not fun either. So the idea is don’t mess up and land so you’re alive and can get a sandwich later.

I’ve not seen it before but some say it’s been done on BMX and FMX, is that where you got the idea?

The Cliff Flip has been in FMX for a couple years now. When people started doing them they looked funny because they were afraid to really extend the cliff-hanger because, well it’s like you’re hanging from your bike upside down 20/30ft in the air. But now a days you have guys like Todd Potter fully extending the cliff-hanger flip like he’s right side up. Mike (Hucker) Clark was the first guy to execute the cliff flip on a BMX at Cam Whites Hillside Jam a few weeks back. It wasn’t fully extended, but on a BMX over a 30ft plus double with no shirt on, he landed squirrely but rode away from it, so definitely got my applause(so gnarly).

So that’s when I started to think about it and wondered if it’s worth the time to put into it cause I didn’t want to do it like Huckers and have it be like I’m fighting for survival upside down but have it be like Potters where a there is a fluidity to it that almost makes it looks as if my mail man could do it.

So how long did it take you to nail the trick?

From start to the result a foam pit gave me was about a solid 5 hours of “that one was good” to “the next being nowhere close (I would have died if this was on dirt. I figured the only way I can say that I think I have that trick in the bag was that I did about 30 straight jumps all back to back to back all extended as the clip.

When can we expect you to land it on dirt?

OOOOOOOO Yah! Well ASAP! The weather is a lil crappy at the moment but that should last for about a few days so when it is clear I’ll be putting my theory of 30 successful makes in the foam theory to the test on dirt. I’d say by the end of the month depending on the weather we should have a Cliff Flip to dirt for you.

What other tricks have you got in the pipe line?

I don’t want to spoil the surprise! lol umm mainly trying to mix up combos and keep it new and fresh so that people just don’t watch the same type of tricks happen 50 times in a web edit or contest. I’m trying not to be that cookie cutter rider that’s predictable so that i as well as the fans of the sport don’t get bored. Boredom is not a favourite status to be in, that has been proven. Lol.

Cheers Mike, look forward to seeing the Cliffy landed on dirt!