I'm not sure if I discovered it the same way as researchers did, but when I was in college I used to play a lot of Beerpong. I wasn't very good for my first year and a half so I went home and made a new year's resolution to "Be Better at Beerpong" (yes... this is a true story).
For purists, I guess I'm playing beirut where you toss the ball into the cup, not beerpong which you play with actual paddles.
After that I broke things down.
1) You can only hit one cup at a time, so you need to pick a cup. Just aiming at the mass is virtually assuring a lower percentage of made shots.
2) Reduce moving parts. It's a ping pong ball, you don't need to move your whole body. The shot should be a motion of only the forearm.
3) Imagine the dotted arc that goes from right inside the back rim of the cup you're aiming, across the table, and through the ball you're holding.
4) Toss the ball along that arc.
It worked incredibly well. I'd win money and games nearly constantly and quickly became the best of my friends. I still wreck them every year or so when we're together and in the mood to play.
Since then, I've dropped most of the steps. Basically I just aim for a cup, and I can hit it. I can do it with both the right and left hand. And usually all I have to do is focus right on that spot below the back rim of the cup I want to focus. If I focus for too long I'll probably mess up, but if I just look at it for a moment and toss the ball in, it works like a charm.
Sounds very similar to what they're saying in this article about focusing in the milliseconds beforehand. And as you continue to obtain quality results from your process it gets easier and easier.
I mean, shit, the choices are... make it or don't make it. Seems like the choice is clear ;-).
And that's my anecdote for how I approached a drinking game my friends kept beating me at and became dominant at, that very much reminds me of the way shooting a free throw is described in this article.