Increases of residual stress stability and alternating bending strength of shot peened AISI 4140 are obtained by successive annealing treatments. This is caused by static strain aging effects, which lead to pinning of dislocations by carbon atoms and finest carbides. It will be shown that by short-time annealing of a quenched and tempered AISI 4140 it is possible to maximize the positive effect of static strain aging, while minimizing the detrimental effect of thermal residual stress relaxation, which was measured by X-ray diffraction method. Static strain aging effects were also found to be responsible for an increase of the quasi static and cyclic surface yield strengths.