The pain is so strange I don't know how to describe it, but definitely not in my back muscles. More like tailbone. When it was bad it traveled up my back a little.
I've been trying to work glutes and back more to keep the muscles warm and to keep them from getting weak. This almost feels like a pinched nerve. Stationary work on the glutes and legs feels good (squats, weights, etc), but the motion of swinging the leg forward makes the muscles not want to fire.
I will likely lay off the leg presses though per your advice. In the past, I have gotten weirdness in my IT band before from it. I was just looking for something to work my legs more while laying off the running. So far, the presses don't seem to bother anything.
The squats and deadlifts really seem to help the pain, so I will stick with that.
Honestly, I am convinced it's from sitting in this goofy nonergonomic car since last December. The more I avoid letting my self rest onto the seat (40 min of not letting my butt touch the seat whew), the better I feel.
It's slowly getting better.
If it doesn't, yeah, I need to look into PT or something.
Yah, I was relating your experience to a time when I helped my brother move. First day, loaded up a big semi. Second day sat all day in passenger seat driving from Denver to Chicago. Third day, after unloading just a few boxes, I could barely bend over and walked with a limp. The pain was really sharp. While sitting in the truck one side of my lower back muscles stiffened up. Probably a very unergonomic seat like yours. I assumed I had pulled a muscle, so I rested for two to three weeks. But it didn't get any better. So I saw a doctor and he told me to stop resting and to stretch and walk. I went on a lot of walks and stopped frequently to bend over and stretch. At first it was painful, but within a few days, I was right as rain.
If you can, also try standing up at your desk from time to time, and maybe even do box jumps, even just a short height.
Not saying any of this will be your cure, just putting it out there in case it helps. I feel eternally indebted to you for your Hopslam rec.
For the leg presses, I meant that the back of the machine's seat presses against your lower back, or coccyx area, which is an area that normally doesn't get subjected to that kind of pressure. More and more, I find myself completely against any exercise that veers away from natural movements, planes, ranges of motion, or stresses. Most free weight exercises recreate fairly natural movements. A lot of machines, racks, and stands force the body into unnatural movements. Even the biceps curl, when done standing and without a preacher curl stand, is a fairly natural movement. I do it all the time when I pick my toddler up off the floor.
In my new st routine, I've tried to organize exercises around these basic movements:
Lifts, Pushes, Rows, Squats, Dips, Pulls, & Presses.
But really, it's mostly just pushing and pulling:
Pushes: Deadlifts, squats, bench press, shoulder press, dips, triceps extensions, etc.
Pulls: Rows, pull-ups/-downs, biceps curls.
I use seven different terms to make it easy to label each set of exercises and order them in a week, so that different body areas are worked on different days:
Sunday, Mon, Tues, Wednes, Thurs, Fri, & Sat
Bottom, Front, Back, Bottom, Front, Back, & Top.
Lifts, Pushes, Rows, Squats, Dips, Pulls, & Presses.
Push, Push, Pull, Push, Push, Pull, & Push.
(Excuse the digression, quasi highjack, but I'm really keyed up about the new routine!)