In this study, the flow stress behavior of ferritic-pearlitic steel (C45E steel) is investigated through isothermal compression testing at different strain rates (1 s-1, 5 s-1, and 60 s-1) and temperatures ranging from 200 to 700 °C. The stress-strain curves obtained from experimental testing were post-processed to obtain true stress-true plastic strain curves. To fit the experimental data to well-known material models, Johnson-Cook (J-C) model was investigated and found to have a poor fit. Analysis of the flow stress as a function of temperature and strain rate showed that among other deformation mechanisms dynamic strain aging mechanism was active between the temperature range 200 and 400 °C for varying strain rates and J-C model is unable to capture this phenomenon. This lead to the need to modify the J-C model for the material under investigation. Therefore, the original J-C model parameters A, B and n are modified using the polynomial equation to capture its dependence on temperature and strain rate. The results show the ability of the modified J-C model to describe the flow behavior satisfactorily while dynamic strain aging was operative. © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.