The isothermal constant strain rate compression experiment was carried out on Zr-4 alloy samples by using a Gleeble-3500 thermal simulator. The thermal deformation behavior was analyzed, and the physical constitutive model based on strain compensation Zr-4 alloy was established by combining the influence of deformation temperature on Young"s modulus and self-diffusion coefficient. The results show that the peak stress of the alloy is sensitive to the deformation temperature and strain rate, and the peak stress will increase with the increase of the strain rate or the decrease of the deformation temperature. The constructed physical constitutive model can better predict the flow stress of the alloy in the thermal deformation process, and its correlation coefficient R is 0.986. The data points with the predicted value deviation less than 10% account for 93.2%, and the average relative error is 6.3%.