In the present paper, the parameters of Johnson - Cook (JC) constitutive model for two steels have been identified, based on the Hopkinson pressure bar test results. The experimental data has been taken from the split Hopkinson pressure bar data found in the literature. Using the measured strain pulses, the experimental stress - strain and deformation - time curves can be extracted. The experimental data have been processed using two different methods. In the first method strain rate assume to be constant during deformation and in the other one the deformation has been applied to a modeled specimen. In each method, an optimal set of material constants for JC constitutive model have been computed by minimizing the standard deviation of the numerically obtained stress - strain curve from the experimental data. Also a sensitivity analysis has been performed on JC constitutive model parameters and temperature changes during test have been investigated. The obtained results show that using constant strain rate method, leads to considerable error in results; for example in this study the minimum error is about 14%.