I remember practicing making the chord forms with my fingers all the time, until those patterns were burned into my memory and the muscle memory of my left hand (muscle memory is the real heavy lifter in this story). I practiced at work, using my right forearm to stand in for my guitar. I did this watching TV. In fact, any time that I was idle I would practice moving from one chord pattern to another on my forearm. Soon those patterns became second nature. Then I moved them to the guitar.

Practicing thusly, I found that soon I was able to make chord changes in mid air, as I moved from one chord to the next one (which is total muscle memory) This allowed me to keep up with chord changes and not loose the rhythm. That is how I did it. Hope that is helpful.

Learning guitar is a lot like dancing, except your partner is your muscle memory. Muscle memory learns by repitition and it does so at its own pace. This is a great frustration to new players, who want to get good asap. In dancing your pay attention to your partner, in making music you dance with your muscle memory. Patient persistant practice pays.